I finished with Invercargill inside an hour, so I thought I’d pop down to Bluff – really just because it’s the most southerly place in New Zealand, so it would be good to say I’d been there. What I found was a mix of dirty/scruffy fishing/container port and up-market swanky place to live, which I guess is typical of these places. You might compare it to Blyth in Northumberland, or North Shields: pick the right spot and you’ll get a million-dollar view; pick the wrong one and you’ll be downwind of the oyster factory. Yes, this is where Bluff oysters come from… which is all that I plan to say about oysters.
After a quick look around I headed back to Invercargill and then on toward Dunedin; but in the event nature intervened and by the end of the day I was back here again. All the roads further north were closed by floods and I had a desperate search for a bed for the night, culminating in me going back – purely by chance – to exactly where I’d been earlier in the day. The process had been incredibly stressful, though the view rather made up for it.
Back in Bluff itself, I had earlier had some amusement at the prices of beds at the Backpackers. I should have borne this in mind as I was desperately phoning round that afternoon, but somehow it slipped my mind that I could have had a bed for $25…
Perhaps one thing the emergency taught me – as indeed had the $100 bed at Lumsden – is that the people who run these places mean well and are generally doing their best. They’re often juggling a poorly-paid job with other responsibilities and pressures, in a way I’m just not aware of.
It’s also worth saying – though perhaps even more obvious – that there are people who can only afford this much. Anyway, here is a little more of Bluff, captured once again in its (roughly) Art Deco buildings…
