Cheese

Oamaru wakes slowly at this time of year (though possibly any time of year). The local cafes do not open until 8am and so this gave the parents an opportunity to wander the town for a bit, prior to grabbing a coffee. We were most surprised to find that an entire town block had been dedicated as a war memorial, then popped into the cafe next door to the Backpackers. This gave the boys a little time to get up and ready, so that we could make our way to the Whitestone Diner & Deli for a delicious brunch. 

This was a lovely way to eat cheese. 

We briefly visited the Rainbow Confectionery store next door and got 3.2 kilos. One of the boys got a little too eager and forced everyone out. Then we got back to our accommodation. After picking up the camera and some extra clothes we made our way to Steampunk HQ (it was a haven for people with ADHD) everything was touchable windable, and twistable. There were lots of cool art exhibits including a boat, motorcycle, train with crane planet destroyer cannon, and inter dimensional light show.

After steampunk HQ we headed to St Lukes Anglican church after spotting an open sign. It is an impressive building and noticeable last night as it was beautifully lit up. We met one of the locals who told us about how difficult it was to keep a historic building earthquake proof.

Mum here - being made of limestone seemed to give some protection to the building, how ever it was impossible to fully insure and only had demolition cover should loss incur.- 

We were also told that the revitalization of the town was all the idea of out-of-towners and entrepreneurs.

We decided to leave after one of the boys started to play with candles and was getting bored. 

A few minutes later, we arrived at Historic Precinct. The steampunkness carried on through the town with skirts, hats, corsets, pins. There was lots of culture, mainly white, but culture. Lots of artwork, tourist attractions and old Victorian buildings. During this we saw the i-site building and decided to walk in. We were then greeted by some friendly people in period dress and watched a short film about the fall off of Oamaru. It was also about how Oamaru used to be the Los Angeles of the South. The reason the roads are so wide in Oamaru is because the bullock trains needed to turn around. We then played croquet, and also went on a Penning Farthing carousel with period hats. After the exciting round on the carousel we made our way to the model buildings where one of the boys gave the other boy a fresh fade.

Since Oamaru is quite a small town everything shuts before 2pm, so we decided to go back to the accommodation for lunch dad threw a hissy fit saying “I never get to pick where we go out.”

After dad calmed down, we ate and then kind of chilled until 7:30 pm. We then arrived at Scotts Brewery for dinner because it was the only place open at this time. The food was incredible. We got 1 loaded fries, 1 normal fries, 1 pulled pork pizza and 1 beef brisket pizza. After eating almost all the food we made our way to the playground and enjoyed our time there. The playground was pretty lit; it had a flying fox, a hamster wheel, slackline, and a mini driving place.

We decided to try our luck again with penguins by taking the camera out and trying to photograph them. One of the boys decided to give it a go but the penguins wouldn’t stay still enough and the camera wouldn’t focus on the penguin. After everyone got a little mad, we let dad have a turn. Dad didn’t have any luck either. We then tried to make it work by holding up a light to make the camera focus, but to no one's surprise they just ran away and hid. We made our way home feeling defeated because photographing the penguins was the main goal. Teeth, toilet, bed, sleep time.

One of the boys-signing off