Dunedin, I owe you an apology. And if I'm honest, this has been a long time coming. My parents moved to the Edinburgh of the South in December of 1999 - the same month I finished high school in Auckland and decided to go it alone, forging my own path in our largest city. As such, I'm guilty of holding on to a teenage-brained, vaguely patronising attitude to the place that claimed the only Auckland parents I know to move there rather than their university-bound children.
But here's the thing. Dunedin is a geographically blessed, culturally rich city that's overflowing with surprises, whether you're a first-timer, or whether you're someone who's been visiting their folks approximately twice a year for more than two decades. And of late, it's finally become clear to me that I've well and truly arrived at being a bona fide Dunedin fan.
Back to the apology. It wasn't until a family member recently said, "you always made it sound as if you never really liked Dunedin", that I realised I had a PR issue with the whānau and needed to set a few things straight. Let's start by acknowledging that, yes, Dunedin isn't ever going to be a contender for being either the sunniest or the warmest main centre in New Zealand, but who really cares? It has roughly the same annual sunshine hours as London and when the sun is still to set behind those storybook-curved hills of the North East Valley at 9.30pm on a still summer's night, Wellington's not the only place you can't beat on a good day.
Unfortunately, once upon a time, my blind spot about Dunedin's climate caused me to rarely take full advantage of all those trips south to see the parents. Then something twigged. Remember that story a few years back about the couple who booked a "Mystery Escape" with Air New Zealand and were then all upset that they got Invercargill when what they really wanted was Queenstown? I had zero sympathy. I'm sorry, if you were after a holiday in Queenstown, then maybe you should've booked a holiday in Queenstown!
The only aspect of their "plight" that carried a bit of weight was that they'd been promised a four to five-star hotel and what they got in Invercargill appeared almost comically drab. So yes, make a complaint about the hotel, but to demand a refund and then hightail it up the road to Queenstown without ever giving Invercargill and the Deep South a chance? The total lack of inquisitiveness bugged me.
