Dunedin - buildings and beer

Dunedin really does have some spectacular buildings. Apparently the court house and prison were built in ‘the first wave of public buildings that changed Dunedin from struggling settlement to established town.’ Is this a sad indictment of society or a simple fact of life?

The Octagon is the meeting place for people new to the place and not so new. Lined with the art gallery, the Regent theatre, St Paul’s Cathedral, the town hall and several bars and restaurants, it really is the hub of the town.

In that attempt to maintain connections with the Scottish capital, the central statue is of Robbie Burns, known as the ploughboy poet for his earthy, womanising poetry, incompatible with contemporary Victorian morality, and largely undecipherable to any but the most pedantic of literature undergraduates. More often than not these days he has a traffic cone on his head after some jolly student jape.

Among the churches, cathedrals, universities and civic buildings you can find coats of arms or gargoyles – little gems in grand settings. These always imply to me that the architect or perhaps the builder had a sense of humour and a personality after all.

And among the most iconic buildings in town are the twin Cadbury towers. You can tour the factory like Charlie although I doubt you’ll encounter Willie Wonka.

I didn’t go for chocolate this time as I was sidetracked by beer instead. Dunedin is slowly moving away from the beer swilling student ‘culture’ to more discerning drinking. We like the Duke of Wellington for the atmosphere and the selection of fine ales, and on this visit we happened across the Inch Bar which felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. We were actually heading for a restaurant, but we forgot to go.

I blame the Emerson’s hoppy porter – hops and porter; it’s a match made in heaven, or a Dunedin brewery. It is described as ‘an awesome wall of floral tropical fruit hop aroma clambering out of the beer glass, hitting the nose with sensory pleasure…mmm. Followed by a subtle smokey malt mouthfeel that really complements the hop profile.’ Admittedly it is described thus on Emerson’s own website, but I feel it is a pretty accurate summation.

So, cheers to Dunedin for a fine couple of days. I couldn’t live there – it’s too isolated and dour for me – but it has some high points; beer and buildings being two of the highest.

The Otago Settlers Museum

The Otago Settlers Museum is a strange collection of modern interactive exhibits and fusty traditional records. In the transport section there are examples of carriages, steam trains, motorbikes and cars throughout the ages. I was fascinated by the tandem bike although I can’t imagine my intrepid sister and brother-in-law looking sweet upon the seat of this bicycle made for two as they take their annual European jaunt. I also admired the penny farthing – those things are monstrous – you can clamber up and have a pedal, if you so desire.

In the main hall exhibits are dedicate to the immigrants (settlers is a much nicer term, don’t you think?) who populated this town and glass cases display the things they brought with them. There are separate areas for Germans, Māori and Chinese, with a smattering of Scots throughout. Dunedin was meant to be the Edinburgh of the Southern Hemisphere (although even the planners conceded that other than the street names there is practically no resemblance) and this museum was founded to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the planned settlement.

Much of Otago was established through the mining of gold and coal and there are homages to both, including a curious diorama of a stuffed miner in a tent who has clearly seen better days. The circular wooden carved table at which people used to fill in their deposit slips at the bank is magnificent, however.

The Smith Gallery is a classic Edwardian portrait gallery in which the pictures line the walls like criminal mug shots recording the original immigrants. The wealthier families could afford oil paintings which are hung symbolically above the lower class daguerreotypes – faces stare in silent soulless surrounds.

Samplers of genealogy and heavy wooden furniture such as stiff-backed chairs and cumbersome pianos cram the room. It’s oppressive and impressive at the same time.

A display called ‘Housekeeping Made Easy’ might more correctly be termed ‘Domestic Drudgery’. The washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning appliances look more like instruments of torture and I began to think how even the names – mangles, beaters, washboards, irons, plungers – have connotations of historical persecution.

In her brilliant book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan pointed out that these ‘improvements’ that were supposed to make the lives of women easier were actually paternally tyrannical. Whereas you used to beat the dust out of the carpets once a year in spring, now you have to hoover once a week or face accusations of slovenliness.

‘Across the Waves’ is a multimedia exhibit relating to the trial by sea that many faced to arrive here. The videos enacting the conditions on ship and the passages of writing on the walls are taken from passengers’ diaries. Usually kept by women, this is how we know the colour of the journey – who danced with whom; who was boring or petty; how tiresome it was to eat the same thing and see the same scenery every day – rather than the dull masculine descriptions of time and weather. The faithful replica of the tiny bunks in dark lighting with creaking noises and a swinging lamp to indicate pitch and roll is perhaps a little too colourful and actually quite nausea-inducing.

Toytown has collections of eerie-looking toys that children used to play with. Sombre soldiers, garish painted wagons and sailor-suited dolls are among the curiosities. There are no pastel colours or soft fluffy animals – my, how times have changed.

Apparently there used to be a TV studio in Dunedin and it was here that the New Zealand version of Playschool was filmed. In addition to the familiar British characters, it featured a Māori doll called Manu (replacing Hamble, whom no one ever liked anyway) and a kiwi called Grubber.

Big Ted, Jemima, Manu and Humpty are displayed at Te Papa, and Dunedin gets the leftovers: a prototype of Humpty, Grubber, and a headless Little Ted. The sign next to the cabinet says that Little Ted was ‘tragically blown up’.

Further investigation – well, the woman at reception – led me to discover that he was actually blown up by the film crew on completion of the final series. So the decapitated body is in a glass case to terrify children, although they’re probably desensitised to such things these days, and to traumatise adults.

I stumbled out from the macabre murder mystery to the freezing winds of the town’s streets and roamed about admiring the architecture and the hardy plants and flowers.

Dunedin railway station

While down in Dunedin recently for work, I had a bit of spare time on my hands, so I pottered about like a tourist.

Rumour has it that the railway station is the most photographed building in New Zealand. It is certainly stylish in an apparently revived Flemish renaissance style. Its contrasting dark basalt, creamy Oamaru stone and pink granite give it a distinctive façade, and the neat gardens that surround it set it off nicely.

At a kilometer in length, the platform is the longest in the country and the fashion parade that takes place every year along it claims to perform on the world’s longest catwalk. The 37-metre clock-tower is a Dunedin icon, and can be seen from almost everywhere around town.

Joseph Ward both laid the foundation stone in 1904 and opened the station in 1906. It was built on time and within budget – those days are long gone.

In the booking hall, the closed ticket booths monitor the mosaic floor comprised of approximately 750,000 glass tiles from Minton.

The floor subsided and was entirely rebuilt in 1966 – original pieces of the floor are displayed in the Otago Settlers Museum. I know because I went there too.

Frances Hodgkins, Femme du Monde

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery is compact enough to view in an afternoon and interesting enough to keep you thinking all night. The wooden floors and solidly coloured walls – mint; sage green; berry red; mustard yellow – set off the art works far better than the boringly clinical white walls and concrete floors favoured of many galleries.

When I visited there was an exhibition of furniture, ceramics, sculpture and paintings such as might conjure up an 18th Century English interior. Marble and bronze sculptures by Italian masters and mahogany, pine and oak tables, dressers and chair in the style of Sheraton, Hepplewhite and Chippendale amongst others, looked perfectly at home here on the other side of the world.

The highlight, however, is the Frances Hodgkins collection of works entitled Femme du Monde. The Dunedin-born artist travelled extensively throughout Europe and many influences were brought to bear on her adapting and developing style. Landscapes, portraits, still lifes and even printed textiles display a love for life and a curiosity about design.

You can see the influence of Cezanne in the French paintings and the groups of families, mothers and daughter and single bachelors. Whether pen and ink pictograms or watercolour and charcoal paintings and sketches, the characters come alive on the walls before you – I feel like a child in a storybook who can step through the frame and into the image at any moment.

Another room includes a couple of paintings by her contemporaries, including Petrus van der Velden who used the same sitter for a portrait as Hodgkins had done for Old Salt. Her portrait is in the Impressionist style and is more than a mirror with subtley and hints of implication. According to the accompanying catalogue, it ‘shows the hand of the true artist, not the mere picture painter.’

Here also is a painting by her older sister, Isabel Field, By Tranquil Waters. The watercolour is rustic and simple; with exquisite greens, greys, and blues, it is wonderfully calming and gentle. On the other hand, Hodgkins’ ‘bold use of colour and her confident and daring brushwork take a traditional subject to a new, almost surreal level.’ Hence, the French market scene pictures bustle with life and colour.

Orange Sellers, Tangier is a fabulous image of a hazy bazaar. In a letter, Hodgkins complained that Tangier was not as colourful as she had hoped, being ‘all browns and whites and muddy creams’. So she manipulated the scene and painted a watercolour in which ‘tumbled oranges and red-skinned onions radiate a fiery glow and the glittering, blinding sunlight bleaches and disintegrates the forms of people and buildings.’ After creating this masterpiece, she wrote almost petulantly, ‘I am going to eschew vegetables after this with a comfortable feeling that I have done my duty by them.’

This is going to sound very familiar, but Frances Hodgkins was not appreciated in New Zealand until she became famous overseas and then people began to follow her with respect and bemusement – someone else says she’s good so she must be.

Red Cockerel painted in 1924 is an oil on canvas in the cubist style using flattened forms and abstract shapes within the context of the traditional ‘vanitas’ painting – a meditation on the transience of all life. Yudi Y Moro depicts two cream and brown dogs curled around each other with quivering insouciance. The shapes are not dogs as we know them, yet we know they are dogs.

The artwork is remarkable, and has been called neo-romantic; signifying nostalgia for a rural past and a fascination with ruins and rustic decay. Her wartime paintings of weirs and Welsh farms are among my favourites. Landscape with Engine (1941) embodies the motif of the machine in the garden and what might have been simple decay is elevated to a new level. The catalogue remarks there is ‘no particular grandeur but Frances’ delicate colour and exquisite mark-making transport the viewer into a magical landscape tapestry.’

She had to defend her art as she made little money of her own and relied upon financial gifts from her family – as a woman she was expected to repay this with a more conservative career than roaming the continent with a paintbrush. In a heartfelt letter she writes to her mother, ‘I have slogged. I do want to make all these years worthwhile and make you all proud of me.’

Yet despite the pressure of the debt and the knowledge that she is misunderstood back home, there is the essence of joy in her work. The Weir is not the dark and depressing oil on plywood that it could have been, and in the words of the catalogue, ‘Patterns of paint dancing across the surface of the paper give Mill House Ponterwyd a bright ebullience.’

The exhibition is stunning and uplifting, beautifully displayed and a triumph of the Dunedin cultural collection. The gift shop and cafe attached are also excellent and the delicately spiced gumbo sends me back out into the Octagon with a spring in my step.