Dunedin with a toddler - lots to love

We’ve just spent the first week of our three month New Zealand tour in Dunedin. It turned out it wasn’t enough time to experience all that the small city in the South West corner of the South Island has to offer, but realistically our budget wouldn’t have run to it all anyway, and we gave it a pretty good run for our money. Here’s a few highlights that helped to make our time there a great experience.

Sleepy Dunedin International Airport is 28km from the city centre with spectacular views over the mountains as you come in to land, what an exciting start to our trip! It’s quite a small airport so it’s quick to pass through and get on your way, and better still, we got a direct flight from Brisbane with Virgin Australia.

I hooked up with Sarah Bond Travel Writer through the travel community on Facebook and Twitter, and she gave me a personalised tour of Dunedin, meaning that I saw some of the hidden gems that other tourists would miss, we went at our own pace, and I got loads of history and info thrown in on the way. If you’re heading to Dunedin, and you know Sarah through the online travel community, I’d definitely give her a shout out!

I drank some really tasty coffee in a gloriously groovy environment at Strictly Coffee, hidden down a dingy back street. In keeping with it’s location, the façade is unassuming, but inside is a treasure trove of delights and the constant queue of locals is reassuringly welcoming. 

Discovery World and the butterfly house at the Otago Museum is an absolute must for anyone with a child in Dunedin. There are loads of cool science experiments that are fun and educational, even when you’re knee high to a grasshopper, then you enter the butterfly house where you’re surrounded by a veritable flutter of foreign butterfly species, as well as a resident lizard, birds and some turtles.. The littlest hobo and I spent a good hour and a half in there and could have spent longer, had we not been heading off to reconvene with the third member of our travelling trio. 

Moana pool, set high on the hill overlooking the city and the harbour below it, is the most fantastic swimming pool for toddlers. There is a leisure pool with a sloped entrance, a lazy river, sprays, and a wave machine, and a separate ‘learners pool’ aside from the other non-little person focussed areas. We really enjoyed spending a rainy morning here, getting wet inside rather than outside.

We loved the views at Tunnel Beach, even though the tide was so high when we visited that there was no beach to be seen (cue disappointed little girl…). The walk back up is a little steep for small legs (and unfit adults, ahem) which meant tired arms for Mr T by the time we reached the top, but it was a beautiful clear sunny day and gave us a great introduction to the local coastline.

We stumbled upon Allan’s Beach on the Otago Peninsula when we went for a drive on a rainy afternoon. The rain cleared as we were driving and we found ourselves in Portobello. A quick consult with the guide book pointed us in the direction of nearby Allan’s Beach, and after a short walk over Lord of the Rings-esque farmland we were really excited to find ourselves on a beautiful expansive beach along with a handful of other tourists and 5 sea lions, lazing in the sunshine. The wind blew away the earlier rain clouds, making for a blue sky afternoon and some interesting shapes being blown in the sand as we played on the shoreline.

The suburb of St Clair had lots of things we liked too - the heated salt water pool was a big hit with Mr T and the littlest hobo, and coffees in the adjoined coffee shop afterwards, with views of surfers scattered along the curved sandy bay to top it off. Mr t also attended one of Judith Cullen's cookery classes here (somebody bought him a really thoughtful valentines present this year!).

We loved getting breakfast then schmoozing around the farmers market a the station on Saturday morning. We picked up some tasty local produce at great prices and there was a great atmosphere to soak up as we made our way through the throngs of locals and tourists alike. Then we headed along the platform and checked out the inside of the station which is rumoured to be the most photographed building in New Zealand.

Music to buy produce by, at the farmer's market

Our visit to Penguin Place was a real treat; we were able to see endangered Yellow-Eyed Penguins up close in their natural habitat while leaving them relatively undisturbed. We were also lucky enough to see a group of young male seals lazing around on the rocks and grassy verges, doing what teenage boys do best!

There are so many things we didn’t fit into our visit, such as a wildlife trip out on the water, a ride on the Taieri Gorge railway, Speight’s Brewery and Cadbury’s World, but everything we did do made it a fun filled week, and it’s good to know that we have plenty to go back for next time too. 

Standing room at Penguin Place

Penguin Place, set on the breathtakingly beautiful Otago Peninsula near Dunedin, is a conservation reserve, dedicated to helping the endangered Yellow Eyed Penguin - apparently the most endangered penguin breed on the planet. The reserve gives walking tours in small groups, which get up close and personal to the penguins while allowing them to remain relatively undisturbed in their natural habitat, which were probably the most compelling reasons for us to choose this particular tour above the other options.

Entry, like so many places in New Zealand at the moment (due to exchange rates and a relatively buoyant economy compared to some other parts of the world right now), seemed quite steep initially, at $49 per adult (the littlest hobo was free) but when you start the tour and realise that the money raised from tours alone funds the entire facility, the charge seems quite justified and reasonable.

Our group listened to a short talk from Ainsley, our guide, about the penguins and the centre before walking over to the penguin hospital. The centre receives rescue penguins from a wide area, being the only one of it’s kind in the vicinity, and we were lucky to see several chicks as well as a couple of different breeds of rescue penguin too.

A rescue penguin in the rehabilitation centre

A Yellow-eyed Penguin chick

From the rehabilitation centre, we went on a short, bumpy bus ride across farmland, with spectacular views spanning both sides of the peninsula, to the penguin habitat. We’d only been off the bus and heading down the track for a couple of minutes before we turned the corner to find a penguin couple standing right in the middle of the path preening their moulting feathers - they were a new couple, but according to Ainsley, if they moult together, they often breed together too, so this was an exciting sight in terms of protecting the species, especially as currently, due to predators such as sea lions, numbers are on the decline.

The couple who moult together, mate together (hopefully)

Monty the teenager with the distinctive Yellow-eyed Penguin markings on his face

They seemed completely unphased by our presence and we all snapped away gleefully. We continued on our merry way, and seconds later we were treated to the sight of several male seals lolling round on the rocks, and another penguin ducking in and out of the long grass on the hillside, only a couple of metres from where we stood. It was amazing to stand so close to these creatures which we had only previously experienced in the zoo and they carried on as if we weren’t there.

Standing with the seals

Camera shy seal!

Our tour took us down the hillside, past several penguin nesting boxes, most of which had penguins inside them to a series of bunkers leading to hides, which allowed us to get close to even more penguins while leaving them relatively undisturbed. We were lucky that most of the penguins we saw were standing - I got the impression that you would almost always see penguins on the tour, but the big deal is whether they’re standing or not; if they’re lying down it’s a bit like looking at randomly scattered rocks!

Visiting at this time of year was particularly cool because the penguins are moulting, and we saw fluffed up and partially balding penguins (the ‘ugly’ ones) right next to their beautifully sleek, neat and streamlined buddies with their distinctive yellow face markings at their very brightest (the ’pretty’ ones), who, it was incredible to hear, had been through the same appearance altering process just a couple of weeks earlier. 

Mr T and I loved the tour and would definitely recommend it. It was an absolute treat to get up so close to these gorgeous little birds without disturbing them; we felt really privileged. The littlest really enjoyed it too, she coped really well with keeping quiet, loved seeing the wildlife and trotting along the trenches, and the amount of walking, with the exception of the hill at the end, was ok for her to manage or else wasn’t too much carrying for us (in the loosest sense of the word… I had the camera around my neck) when the slopes got a bit too challenging.