Our overnight stop for last night was a private park-over-property on the edge of rural Palmerston. Our hosts are keen members of NZMCA and enjoy having fellow members to stay on their property. Luckily the three of us slotted in snugly, leaving no room for another lot of travellers who drove by looking for a place to park overnight. Just as well we had phoned earlier and booked our spaces.
After a fine sunny day the heavens opened up overnight and the temperatures had cooled down for when we started to mosey on down to Mosgiel. Our travelling companions both possess a GPS system, while we rely on a map. It’s fair to say that these systems took us on a convoluted road to finally reach our destination. We were playing “follow the leader” as we turned off SH1 on our approach to Dunedin city, climbing up the hillside suburbs of Maori Hill, Waikare and Half Way Bush. Why is it that traffic lights are always positioned at the highest point on a hilly road, and they are always red? After driving up and down narrow hilly suburban roads we crested down the last hill to see the Taieri Plains laid out before us. Before too long we arrived at the Taieri Showgrounds, Mosgiel, where we plan to stop for several nights - we took the option of a power site on hard standing. Our next door neighbour is a huge golden motor-home called Goldfinger 11 which would cost as much as a fancy house, well out of our league, of course.
The Dunedin area is well known for its Scottish connection, and the town of Mosgiel is no exception. According to Wikipedia, it was named after Mosgiel in Ayrshire, the farm of the poet Robert Burns. In fact, a statue of Robert Burns has pride of place in the Octagon, right in the centre of Dunedin City, and no doubt we will do a “city tour” in a day or two.
Mention the name Mosgiel and Kiwis think of the former Mosgiel Woollen Mills, famous for their wool blankets, and they also produced fabrics such as well as tweeds, flannels, and serge as well as knitting yarn. The Mosgiel woollen mill was the town’s major employer from 1871, until its closure in 2000. The buildings are now an industrial estate known as Mill Park.
The town of Mosgiel has a long main street of shops which seem to be doing well. We noticed several fish and chip shops offering Bluff Oysters (the very best tasting oysters of all) for $30 a cooked dozen. A dozen battered oysters each would make such a delicious meal but the cost makes it just too expensive for us. Never mind – perhaps we will Lotto one day. Biking is obviously encouraged in this town, we noticed a bike hitching post in the main street.
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