O for Oresome Oamaru

Saturday 17 May

Pretty dawn over Old Seadown School, but sadly I was feeling rough (fighting off a lurgy) so skipped the bacon & egg butties that the others were concocting for breakfast.

Hit the road shortly before noon, heading for Old Bones POP near Oamaru. Passed through St Andrews (not that one) and detoured to Waimate NZMCA to use their bins (and marvel at their painted silos) before continuing south under apocalyptic clouds - very bizarre weather formations.

Old Bones felt like another home from home - we slotted into two adjacent spaces and had a chat with Grant, the lovely owner. Grabbed a spot of reheated leftovers lunch and headed into town for op shops & exploring.

No jerseys for Jez but he was soon consoled by a visit to Buggy Robot and then Craftworks brewery in the Victorian Quarter. We got chatting with Mr BR - turns out he & his wife left Titirangi in 2021 to pursue his creative robot dreams in the Steampunk capital of the World! His creations are so cool - I loved the Dresden porcelain figures that he had beheaded and replaced with spiky haired cubist skulls. All his creations had such wonderful buggy eyed expressions, they were wonderfully whimsical.

He gave us a flyer for the Penguin Club and suggested we go along for the gig in the evening.

Two craft beers later and the guys were up for anything! Did I mention that they were 6.5% and 7.5% and our guys are usually on the low carb low alcohol hazy IPAs so it was a bit of a shock to the system!

We had a stroll down to the harbour with Jez increasingly ruing the lack of jerseys - it was VERY chilly! The clouds were still rather stormy and wild, but glowing in such odd colours and stripes - it may not show on camera, but some were even green tinged.

Then the designated driver (me) took us home where we had hot showers in the lodge, washed our hair and Abby, Louis & I scrubbed up good for a night out at the Penguin Club! Abby cooked us cheese & ham toasties for a quick supper before the gig - yum - then we ditched Jez and headed back into town.

It was Kiwiana night at the Penguin Club and we signed ourselves in at $5 a head, and ended up at a table right next to the stage. The first act was a Korean/Kiwi and Chinese/American duo on guitar and violin - they did several good old Kiwi classic covers to sing along to - the violin girl admitted that she didn't have a Kiwi background but she did know Lorde and sang a fab cover of Green Light (we think she should have taken the mic more and done a bit more Lorde!!). The second band was called Songpilots and was more "our age" - they came on and announced that they were going to sing originals, and seeing as they were from Timaru that was Kiwiana - they were good, but we were not convinced as we were here for the Kiwi bangers!

It was a really cool traditional old style music venue run by a local community group but had seen some pretty awesome names in the past - including our favourite, Marlon Williams.

Jez had a family zoom call so stayed in with Harley - I don't think he minded ;-)