Soul Patch: Sleezy ponytails-Now available in chin form!

Everything remotely worth doing has been done before, although they could have elaborated on my ponytail "joke" a little better.

Irony in Truckloads: Idiots on the Internets

Buddhism Themed Gold Moblie Phone

Cargill's Castle

Down Isadore Road in the suburb of St Clair, past the golf course and out to sea, are the ruins of an 18th century mansion. Designed by a young Francis Petre, the 19th-20th century English import who gave southern New Zealand's it's Catholic cathedrals, concrete, and a new architectural style to compete with the Protestant favoured Gothic.

The concrete style is deceptive, I lived very near another of his early works, Castlamore (1875), last year, and thought it was a recent building.














St Joseph's Cathedral, on Rattray and Smith St, 1878
















A later work: The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch (1904)














Cargill's Castle was one of Petre's early works, built for Edward Cargill, son of city founder William in 1876-77. It is on private land, accessed only across several backyards, and the building itself is too unstable to be open to the public. The building isn't much publicised, or known, in Dunedin, there are some far prettier non-ruins closer to the centre of town by Petre and others (with far worse views).

I heard about it this year, but information was quite scarce, although it's since arrived on The Hivemind and google maps. I ended up wallowing about in the diaries of Paul K Lyon; in this case Dunedin flatting life in 1975.

Five or six hundred metres away is the far more famous Tunnel Beach, where the Cargill family had a stepped tunnel bored down through 60 metres of rock to reach an isolated beach. I've already been twice, it's a majestic spot. I had my own pictures somewhere, but can't find them.














The tunnel itself may have been designed by Petre, but is a rough, unadorned work itself.


After losing the scent for most of the year studying 2nd year medicine, I had a couch surfer living at my flat, he mentioned that family of his lived near a castle, and realising that it was Cargill's, not Larnach, I eagerly took up his offer to join, and we were off.


Francis Petre married Edward Cargill's daughter Margaret in the Castle and had thirteen children, after much wrangling over religious differences. (The Cargill's were/are? Presbytarian). Cargill died in 1903 and the Castle was a cabaret and restaurant in the 30s and 40s, serving serviceman and so on. The owner John Hutton then fell ill in 1944 and, after a surprising rapid recovery turned the Castle into an evangelical temple until 1949. The building changed hands and became a club again before closing in the 50s.










After a few failed attempts to put the Castle to use by various people, and partial demolition in 1974, and similar threats from the owner in the 1990s, Cargill's Castle Trust acquired the building in 2001, access with neighbours is being discussed, as well as the possibility of a track linking to Tunnel Beach.