decluttering dunedin
When I'm not abhorring my university town for its infamous alcohol culture, I hold the so-called dirty city in a good light.
Maybe it’s because I’m about to leave, but I began to regard Ōtepoti with a certain fondness during my last semester at uni. I’ve started clearing out the flat and packing my things to go back home this weekend. In the process, I fell in the trap of something that commonly happens while decluttering a space: I got distracted by memories. This is a messy tribute and farewell to Ōtepoti (Dunedin), a city I’ve ultimately come to love.
Found on the coast at the southeast end of the South Island, the road to Dunedin is long. Coming up the hill and finally seeing the city on the horizon had the same effect on me as a student every time: first a wave of relief, then awe, then dread. Partly because it meant I had to go back to having academic responsibilities, partly because I had to return to the ups and downs of living alone, but mainly because I just didn’t enjoy myself here. Until recently.
It had a short run as the biggest city in Aotearoa in the 19th century. Today Dunedin ranks as the seventh. And as with any other place but especially of small towns, you get sick of it after a while. When you’ve lived here for a couple of years, novelty turns into norm and there isn’t much else to do—unless you’re into drinking, in which case, there is always something to do. I’ve complained time and time again about Dunedin’s excessive party culture and, frankly, I’ve grown tired of doing so. You eventually become accustomed to their routines, you’ll know which streets to avoid on which days, you get used to hearing D&B and other weird sounds outside your window and learn to tune it out. And though the parties form a big part of Dunedin’s reputation, they’re mostly concentrated at the north end of town. Still, mind the aftermath of broken glass, the dried up vomit, the random egg yolk on the streets. Behold! The city lives up to its beloved nickname of Dirty Dunners, with its rundown flats and littered roads. But when I'm not abhorring my university town for its infamous alcohol culture, I hold the so-called dirty city in a good light, really.
In his psychogeographic ode to the city of literature, Andrew Paul Wood celebrates every detail of the city’s culture, history, and landmarks. The Dunediniad was published in 2018, but the Dunedin portrayed in the poem is still very much the one I know now (minus the chocolate factory, rip) and, I imagine, the one it was decades ago.
“Dunedin is a city of fogged windows and urgent comfort,
of cold that gets into the bone marrow.
…
In Dunedin dawn doesn’t come rosy fingered and saffron shoon,
it’s sleeting—
lead-lidded,
milk-opalescent, blind mineral eye
sharp-edged, brilliant,
shadows like long knives.”
Ōtepoti is notoriously grey. This didn’t help against my tendency to isolate indoors, in solitude. Good days are hard to come by, but they come. Looking back now, I’ve collected a few of them over the years. And most of these good days are good because of friends. I am grateful for their company during listening parties and spontaneous trips and cafe explorations and badminton rallies and everything in between. At times when I bump into familiar faces in town or find connections when meeting new people, I realise I’ve made a home here after all.
“Dunedin of my alma mater Otago,
Dunedin my sometime second womb”
There are many things I won’t miss: the screeches of drunk people, the screeches of seagulls, the screeches of speeding cars, the fickle weather, the humdrum air. But I know when I’m making a life somewhere else I’ll remember the walkable roads branching out from the Octagon. I’ll miss the staple restaurants with the student-friendly prices. I’ll think of the rhododendrons in the Botans during springtime.
Four years went by fast. It seems in that time both the city and I haven’t changed much. But if you observe closely, you might see some parts replaced by something new, other parts now gone and missed. The city is in a constant state of construction. At the time of writing, most of George Street and the surrounding areas are undergoing refurbishment. A new, large student accommodation is being built. Three places are opening up in town. I wonder how much this city will change in a few years. I wonder how much I will.
One day I was going through some entries in The Friday Poem and came across two written by Dunedin poets. The first was about frugality introduced through genital hygiene, the second one on an ant-eating fungus as metaphor. It amused me how both pieces, different as they were to each other, carried an undeniable, unabashed sense of Dunedin-ness.
If there is one thing I admire most about this city, it is something I myself lack: that is its consistency, which I attribute to a strong sense of identity. Dunedin has its own distinct character; Dunedin knows itself (for better or worse). The students—heartbeat of the city—ever dedicated to the rhythm of weekly flat parties, always finding causes for celebration. Baldwin Street will continue to uphold its status of steepness. Whenever the weather warms up, trust that the Dunedinites will make the most of it outdoors. And the Otago Farmers Market is open, rain or shine, every Saturday all year round. There will always be apples in the fruit stands.
As Wood writes in the introduction to Dunediniad, “Dunedin is a city that keeps changing as much as it stays the same.” At the end of these four years, I can say it was a privilege to experience that, while it continues to move through the inexorable drift of modernity, Ōtepoti stays true to itself.