We took a drive with my mother to Middlemarch, an historic little map smudge squatting on the eastern flank of the central Otago region. It's just over an hour's drive from Dunedin, which is why we often end up circling the area despite its distinct lack of concentrated, explicit attractions. As a somewhat surreal voyage through a schist-heavy, bitten-down landscape,
the passage is of greater interest than the destination.
The ancient basement rocks poke out through the ragged, sack-coloured grazing like dinosaur armour, rising to whipped meringue configurations in one place but laid out in
weary couchant slabs in others- according to the angle of their strata, I suppose.
the passage is of greater interest than the destination.
The ancient basement rocks poke out through the ragged, sack-coloured grazing like dinosaur armour, rising to whipped meringue configurations in one place but laid out in
weary couchant slabs in others- according to the angle of their strata, I suppose.
This looks like drought, but green of any description means there's been meaningful rain.
Don't let this image fool you; Middlemarch is shambolic dive, by and large. Forsaken by historic fortunes and probably a large proportion of its founding families, it lies about the road in a polyglottic sprawl that speaks of a long and general decline punctuated by
single syllables of contemporary uptick.
single syllables of contemporary uptick.
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 The Otago Rail Trail- a newish route through a string of rural burgs- is the only real game in town, aside from the eternal farming. Middlemarch has become its handmaiden, devoting its main drag almost entirely to the cargo-cultish service of the cycling tourist trade. Helmeted hordes disgorge from the train and various vans. They are herded off to cafés and then chased out onto their rented bicycles. I've always thought of bikes as a way to escape other people, so I don't personally understand the appeal of massed, administrated cycling in matching shirts and headgear that smells of a hundred other sweaty scalps. The route is open to anyone, hazard-free, clearly delineated with no shortage of obvious accommodation and yet most prospective cyclists seemed to cleave to these organised clots. Just watching them all squinting in the kind of sunlight that will scorch them unwittingly scarlet by the end of the day while their pack leaders droned through safety spiels prior to launch gave me a referred case of the chafed bores. Their plight was incomprehensible. |   |
 Monotony may be a general principle but the fruit is never a bore in Central. Rosaceae go crazy here. The apricots are god-like.  |   |
 |  This strange little place had this strange little plaque affixed to its windowsill. |
 |  Schist. Goats. Schist. Sag. |
Metallic crap aficionados should really make the effort to extend sideways from Dunedin and visually fondle all this oxidised largesse. Everything ever constructed and transported at ruinous expense is rusting on its arse somewhere in Middlemarch. You'll love it.
  |   The Strath-Taieri Rabbit Board. Badly needs bunny ears. |
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Do high-functioning sheep dream of flat-affect shearers? Is that a sheep? Why the long faces? That leg needs attention. I smell burning hair.
We got lost looking for a river but came across something called Sutton.
There is nothing as distinct as any definite departure from Middlemarch; you are just sort of not there any more, on your way back toward the coast. The hills lose their most egregious deformities and settle back into felty regularity. Farms begin to look functional; some even have names. Another year will elapse before enough jaundiced detail is rubbed off the memory to facilitate a return.
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