Flooding

On Friday we woke to rain in Dunedin. Quite a lot of rain in fact. So much rain that we decided to plan some indoor activities. We started with brunch at the Vogel Street Café - Dunedin has an impressive amount of excellent eateries - and then went to the Dunedin museum. It is a really good museum, and I learned a lot about the early settlers in the area, many of whom were Scottish. How brave they must have been to set off on the three month voyage with all their belongings in a small trunk, probably never to return to Scotland again. 

In the afternoon Jamie suggested that we go on a tour of the local brewery, Emersons. What a tremendous idea that turned out to be! Emersons was started by a Dunedin guy, and it has grown since the early 1990s until it moved to a brand new purpose built building last year. The knowledgable and enthusiastic young guide took us through the whole process of brewing and then led a tasting session of six beers. We continued this in the friendly adjoining bar, and ended up ordering dinner there too. It was a really lovely evening. When we eventually left the brewery, it was raining harder than ever. The gutters had turned into rivers. And when we checked the weather reports we discovered that all of the roads out of Dunedin were closed due to flooding. Then David phoned from Melbourne in Australia to tell us that his and Chanel's flight the next morning from Christchurch to Queenstown was cancelled due to the bad weather. At that point it wasn't even clear whether their Melbourne to Christchurch overnight flight would be able to go ahead. How were we all going to get to our next destination of Queenstown? To find out, check the next thrilling instalment of my blog!