Lewis Pass
Holiday Park cabin Rakaia
Boulder with cracks filled with crystals
Moeraki Boulders
Olverston HouseI hadn't intended to drive quite so far but I just didn't find a suitable place to stop. Eventually I found a great cabin at Rakaia Holiday camp south of Ch Ch about 9 hours after I set out. These cabins are very well equiped clean and cheap a real feature of New Zealand. Next day it was an easier drive to Dunedin via the amazing Moeraki Boulders, great mud balls being exposed by the sea from the mudrock cliffs. It was difficult finding a room in Dunedin, apparently this is the main tourist month in the south so I am now trying to book rooms ahead. A piece of advice for travelers if you are coming this way, do pack a wide variety of clothes, it will be hotter than you expect, colder than you expect, wetter or greyer than you expect, and thats probably all in the same day!
Dunedin offered me some more answers on Connie's trail. In Dunedin she stayed at a house called Tulcairn which is now a boarding house at Chalmers School. It seems to have had a good few additions over the years and the surrounding bush has certainly disappeared although the steep roads she records are still as heart-stopping. During my trip I have also been trying to find out more about a painting found in Connie's house. I had identified it as coming from the brush of Dorothy Richmond who we know had stayed at the House at Arisaig and whom Connie had first met when staying and travellng with members of the Richmond family in New Zealand. I had seen a very similar painting at a temporary exhibition at Te Papa Museum on a previous visit to NZ. I hadn't really made the connections then but had noted the work. This visit I hoped to find out more. In Dunedin I decided to visit Olverston House a large Edwardian home with all original contents. Now this whole story is full of co-incidental events to the extent that this one seems almost inevitable. When I had visited Maggie Atkinson in Nelson she had a book about New Zealand' most famous woman artist Frances Hodgkin and in it I found the very painting I was looking for. The book ascribed it to the Theomin gallery in Dunedin, but I could find no record of this gallery. From visiting Olverston I not only found the actual painting hanging on the walls but also discovered that its then owner David Theomin had commissioned the work from Frances when he met her on a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1902. Still be be discovered is when and why Dorothy painted exactly the same orange seller in Tangier because we know that she was not there at the same time. We know from Connie's journals that Dorothy was very friendly with Frances and that they both visited Tangiers although not at the same time Not only that, but at Olverston I found a large etching exactly the same as the one now hanging in the front porch at Arisaig , and orginating from Connie, by Scottish artist James McBeth a really gloomy prognosis called the " The harbour of refuge'. I never liked it but now at least feel I should look after it a bit better, Just how and when did it come to his home in Dunedin? via Dorothy or Frances perhaps or could he have known Connie? Well tomorrow I am off to Te Anau intending to meet up with friends Lindsay and Sarah Maclane from Yorkshire for a lunch at the tourist centre in Gore! The weather forecast is for torrential rain over the whole country.
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