Today was more sightseeing, although I did stop in at the conference for a while. There was less appealing stuff on this morning, so I took the opportunity to sleep in and didn’t actually get to the conference until 11am, after a leisurely brunch. The session I attended was interesting, but there were as many presenters as audience, so it was not, perhaps, as engaging as it could have been.

Today was based on trying to find out something ‘official’ about Kate’s ancestors, the Weller Brothers (Edward, George and James?). I started at the Otago Settlers Museum and was able to capture pictures of portraits for Edward Weller and a wooden bench that was in their shop and used for church services, apparently. I was a bit disappointed about how little was mentioned of the sealers and whalers who first settled in the area.

By the time I visited the Otago Musuem I had worked out why. Whaling, at least in the township set up by the Wellers, only really lasted 10 years. In that time, the whaling industry had so destroyed the whale populations that there was no viable industry left. As far as white settlement went, though, the foothold was made and the British colonisation used the whaling settlement as a starting point for the town of (what is now) Dunedin. I did manage to get some more pictures of Museum presentations on the Wellers and whaling, which included a re-print of an oil picture of the Weller settlement in the 1830s. I’ve also scooped up some written references to the Weller brothers and am chasing up some more printed material through a boutique publisher. It’s fun having a site-specific task to do!

The day started cold, overcast and sleety. Then it turned just cold, with some sunlight breaking out for a while before the cloud came over again. Dunedin’s really a quite nice place, but you’d have to really love it to put up with the weather, I think.