When Is A Castle Not A Castle

Wednesday 13 December

This morning we arrived at breakfast to find several members of our party, including Darryl the coach driver, had been attacked by a virus (brought back memories of Australia!), so only a depleted group headed out on to the peninsula to see Lanarch Castle. One Australian lady, Tess, had been so ill during the night, she had gone to hospital. Apparently there has been a virus over here for the past few months that the Government is spending large amounts of money trying to find out where it comes from. It is not confined to one particular area of the country and seems quite contagious, but as yet no one knows of any antidote.

Lanarch Castle is not really a castle, more a small stately home. We had asked the waitress how far we would be traveling to get there, and although she lived only an hour and a half out of Dunedin, she had no idea, as she had never been there! It actually took less than thirty minutes to reach. We entered through beautiful gardens, on the side of the hills overlooking the port, the river and out to the Tasman Sea.

William Lanarch was a successful bank employee in Australia, who was asked to come to New Zealand to set up the first branch of the Otago Bank. When he arrived he saw all the people arriving to settle in this region, farmers and tradesmen, all needing supplies, and he recognized an opportunity to set up an import and export business, and he rapidly became rich. He married a wealthy young lady, Elizabeth, who brought with her a dowry of 85,000 GBP. She was also accompanied by her step-sister, Mary, as her companion. In 1868 William set about building himself a house to befit his status, on land he had purchased on the peninsula opposite Port Chalmers. All the materials he needed to complete his Italian-style interior design – marble fireplaces, Venetian glass, floor tiles from Minton in Staffordshire and woods from nearby forests in South Island as well as from Tasmania - could be imported and easily transported across the river and up the hill. The house, built of local sandstone, is a large square double fronted building, with crenellations around the roof and a wide verandah around three sides (as he would have had at his home in Australia) – the windows of which were not glassed in until several years after the building was completed. A large ballroom was also a later addition, to one side of the main house, built to hold a party for his daughter Kate’s 21st birthday. His first wife died at the age of 38 and he promptly married her step-sister (conveniently already ensconced in a room on the opposite of his bedroom to his first wife). Unfortunately she also died at the age of 38 - there was quite a lot of gossip at the time – and he soon married a third wife, Constance, thirty years his junior. By this time he was often away many months of the year in Australia and Asia on business trips, so he left his new young wife at the castle, in the company of his second son, Douglas. They were similar ages and like a fairy tale, soon fell in love. William ignored all the rumours, as by this time he had serious financial problems within his business interests and in the early 1900’s he committed suicide by shooting himself, leaving everything he owned to his second son, Douglas, as he felt he had given his first son more than sufficient in his lifetime. His first son had trained as a lawyer and challenged the will, and three years later was granted full ownership of the castle and grounds. Constance moved back to her family in Wellington and Douglas went to live nearby. The first son, beset by problems of his own, also committed suicide, seven years after his father. Douglas and Constance never married, although Douglas did marry a lady from Wellington late in life.

Lanarch Castle was then used for many things – a hospital for soldiers who had served in the First World War, a nunnery, a barracks for American soldiers in the Second World War, and a school, before being left to deteriorate, as it was too expensive to upkeep. Mary Barker brought it in1967 when it was in a very bad state of repair (no one knows how much she paid for it) and restored it, managing to trace many items of the original furniture that William Lanarch had had especially made to fit the alcoves and rooms. She has also lovingly reinstated the gardens to provide a wonderful selection of native New Zealand plants amidst fountains and waterways and follies, overlooking the river, the port and the town of Dunedin.

We had a guided tour around most of the rooms in the house – Mary Baker still lives in an apartment within the building - with Deborah, who was obviously passionate about the castle. One of her first statements was that no photography was allowed for security, as the house was still lived in – but I had already snapped the Library – naughty, naughty. They have converted the stables to accommodation, and those staying at the castle eat in the house dining room at the original table. Antiques Roadshow would have had a field day here, with so many objets d’art around, all with an interesting history. There was lots of different woods, all polished to reveal the beautiful grain, on the walls, around the doors and windows, from oaks and mahogany, to teak and ebony and even New Zealand honeysuckle on the dado rails. Much was carved in spectacular old Italian style with elaborate floral and cherubic designs (which visitors try to pick off and remove as mementos). On the first floor we visited the nursery, the Nanny’s room (the only servant to live-in) and the old bathroom with marble bath and lead pipework. We climbed a steep spiral stairway to the battlements – 320 metres high – from where we had a wonderful panoramic view of Dunedin and the surrounding lands. After the tour we wandered around the grounds for a short while, until Alan arrived, driving the coach - lucky he had done a stint driving and commentating last year – as Darryl was by now very unwell.

On leaving the castle, we returned to the city, to drop off Darryl to see a doctor, and pick up those who had not traveled to the castle, hopefully including Tess. After a break of an hour to let those people find a pharmacy or a doctor or just get themselves ready for a long journey, we set off again. But several people were still unwell, so it was not a very relaxed trip towards lunch. We drove up across the flyover through the city, passing ‘Scots Stand’ – a spot on the rail line with a good grandstand view, where the train conveniently breaks down every time an important rugby match is being played. Out of town we drove through large flat valleys that regularly flooded, resulting in good rich pasture and a high ratio of sheep or cattle per acre. We passed through towns like Milton (named for the poet?, or the many mills in town?), Balclutha – meaning town on the Clyde – where at one time a ferry was needed to cross the river, now replaced by a bridge. The town was once washed away by flooding, but was rebuilt in exactly the same position as people were happy there. There was a bye law in this town that alcohol could only be sold from a hotel with at least five letting rooms – another Scottish custom? – and Clinton – “the three horse town” – this slogan appears under the town name sign as you enter and leave. There used to be three Clydesdale horses (large shire type animals) to plough the fields before tractors – while many surrounding towns could only afford one horse in the early days. Bill Clinton visited here on one of his presidential tours to this country and they renamed their main street “Presidential Highway” and the street crossing at right angles, “Gore Street”.

We stopped for lunch at Peggydale – almost a hypermarket, at the side of the road. It sold most things – although jade and merino/possum wool sweaters were its main custom. We had lunch before wandering around the store where we bought Colin a jade pendant (to replace the one lost in Thailand last year – in Maori terms, this one has almost a similar message to the words carved on the last talisman. Later in afternoon we passed through the deer capital of New Zealand – Mossgiel – they serve venison on lots of menus here, but as it is mostly farmed it is not as strong or ‘gamey’ as the venison we are used to at home. Several different species of deer were introduced here in the 1880’s, including fallow, red, sika (a Japanese variety) and elk (North American), but as they had no predators, their numbers became a problem, particularly as they ate all the small shoots and saplings in the forests, so that when the larger trees were felled, there was nothing growing to replace them. The Government finally acknowledged the problem in the late 1950’s and were looking for a way to cull the creatures. In 1960 Tim Wallace, purchased his first helicopter (they were becoming more affordable), got a licence to own a gun and started to hunt deer in the National Park from the air. At this stage he left the carcassses there, but he soon realized that the German market was crying out for venison, and he could bring the dead animals out and export them. Others soon joined in, and in no time, the numbers of deer in the forests were depleting. His next idea was to bring the animals out alive and farm them, which has been working successfully every since, the meat being labeled ‘Sovena’ (farmed). Fields are fenced with six foot wire meshes, so that the deer don’t jump out and they are now becoming domesticated – if they do escape they often come back to their field because they know they can eat safely there. 1.75 million deer have been commercially raised, but the numbers are now declining, because the Germans only eat venison in their winter, and deer are raised and breeding well all year round here – the New Zealanders are trying to educate them differently. Deer are still classified as a ‘noxious animal’ here, so anyone can shoot deer in the Parks as there are still large numbers roaming, providing they have the proper gun license. The antlers are a by-product, exported to mainly to Japan and other Asian countries where they use them for medicinal purposes and the velvet covering as an aphrodisiac.

Te Anau is a small tourist settlement on the edge of the second largest lake in New Zealand and the largest in South Island. It was formed by three arms of a glacier meeting and combining and has a surface area of 344 sq kms, a shoreline of 483 kms, and a depth of 417 metres – which means that at least 200 metres of the water is below sea level. One side of the lake is private land, while the other side is National Park and a World Heritage site. We were staying at the Village Motel – which was the usual collection of single storey rooms around a square, and a central block, but all the rooms had names of “old shoppes and businesses” on billboards above them – ours was “Apothecary and Perfumes – can relieve all ailments”, but there was also the Tivoli theatre, complete with ionic pillars, ironmongers, confectioners, barbers, etc - one above each room.

Tomorrow we are off to Milford Sound and will need to take something for lunch with us, so we wandered down to the local supermarket and purchased some biscuits, cheese, fruit, and a drink for our feast. We wandered across the park opposite our motel, which was very prettily landscaped with trees, shrubs and flowers, the sun was shining exceedingly warmly – it is hard to believe that at lunchtime we were looking at warm jumpers and coats in the hypermarket, as it was really cold. Temperatures do change in a blink of an eye.

Dinner tonight was provided in the hotel. When changing, I decided to wear my white trousers which hadn’t emerged from the case since Thailand. Big mistake – I could get them on - just – but not comfortably buttoned up! I wonder just how much weight we have put on – sitting all day on coaches and eating hotel food! That did not stop me ordering an extremely tasty “billy-can” of mussels for entrée followed by venison shank casserole and rhubarb pannacotta. The amount of meat was huge – obviously deer over here are super large. Colin had small lamb noisettes, and in fact, also helped Jennifer out by eating some of hers, as she was not feeling her best today. The food was tasty. As several people were still feeling either poorly or weak, we didn’t linger after the meal. Colin had some piccys to download, but when he tried loading them on the Thai Shite, it was full again, so he spent the next couple of hours downloading hundreds of stills and some video to disks. Hopefully when we get to the Cook Islands next week we will have some time to make a photo-blog, of some of our more humorous and spectacular photos.