Repairs at Dunedin, New Zealand
Repairs at Dunedin, New Zealand
Our trip to New Zealand from the Antarctic was uneventful--if you consider that a ship missing a screw and with a sixteen-foot hole in the side was seaworthy. We missed the entrance to Port Chalmers and cruised around for a while looking for it. After arriving, we were soon put into a drydock.
I, for one was appalled when I saw the size of the hole in the ship and the condition of the sides. Workmen were soon down in the tanks repairing the hole by welding new plates.
We had a wonderful time in Dunedin. One of the highlights was the day that visitors came on board. No one expected the long lines and it was a lot of fun to see the reaction of our visitors. Our pop machine, which squirted pop into a paper cup, was a novelty in New Zealand and was very popular.
During our stay I met a lawyer in a pub and he invited me and my buddy to spend the weekend with his family. They lived in a town named Balclutha which was an hour or so from Dunedin.
He had been instrumental in a campaign to turn their area from "dry" to "wet" and everytime we stopped in a pub all of the drinks were free. I appreciated this very much
Part of the "entertainment" he arranged for us was to go on a wild boar hunt in the Blue Mountain area. I was equipped with an M1 rifle from the ship. The picture below shows the area we were to enter to do the hunt. It was an exciting experience and I ended up in a tree with a very angry boar circling below me. I had dropped the rifle while scrambling up the tree.
On the day that we left, some of our girlfriends came down to say "Bon Voyage,"and it was a sad parting. Our next stop was to be Tahiti, and many of us had no idea what awaited us there.
