Dunedin: a suburban love letter
And the pensioner caught in a global scam
Puzzled about this? Stay tuned.
I’ll be honest with you, two stories died on me and this is my back-up plan.
It came to me at 2am when I couldn’t sleep (thanks to the full moon, boy racers and an approaching deadline).
This month marks 14-years since I moved to Dunedin. I recall that first night sleeping in our newly purchased villa as fireworks lit up the sky for Chinese New Year.
What a welcome.
I’ve come to know the city quite well over those years, largely because I visit different locations each day as part of my job (not always good, but often memorable).
My early morning challenge to myself was to write a love letter to Dunedin, by looking at the sum of its parts.
Those parts are the suburbs that make this city, from Abbotsford to Waverley.
So I’m casting my eye looking for things that I may have missed. Here is the first installment.
The student quarter
No street has given me more column inches than Castle St; the parties, the couch fires, and the sheer joy of once writing about a bacon buttie, drink and ciggie fundraiser being stubbed out by the Dunedin City Council.
But have you ever noticed this?
A netball pole on Castle St. Photo: Hamish McNeilly
As the caption says, it’s a netball pole on Castle St. It has been there for years.
The same netball pole on Castle St. Photo: Hamish McNeilly
Maybe it is public art? Who knows. But if you do know its origin, contact me.
Gardens/North East Valley
I got a scoop as soon as I parked the car. Botanical Takeaways were changing their pricing board. How often does that ever happen!
Looks to me like there might be a potential price hike coming for chow mein and chop suey. A close-up reveals the middle digits have been removed.
Price change on the board? Photo Hamish McNeilly
Have you ever noticed the North Dunedin Police Station address is 111? I have. I tell my kids every time.
EVERY. DAMN. TIME.
Also on my drive up North Rd I noticed the sign at Chingford Park saying ‘Disk Golf’ rather than ‘Disc Golf’.
A typo in an official sign! I should lay awake at 2am more often!!
Normanby
Normanby was covered in road cones. Not only that but the old tavern is getting an extreme makeover as it is transformed into residential units. As an aside, I spent five minutes stuck behind a bus advertising an event since cancelled by Covid.
The bus ended in Normanby, I was not so lucky.
Port Chalmers
SH88 is absolutely jammed. There was so much road works they may as well restrict the road to 10kmh. But I was impressed with the stop/go workers outside Port Chalmers who waved at every passing car. That’s commitment.
I never noticed but the main road, also called George St (like Dunedin) has hairdresser/barbers called Barbaressa. Amazing. Even more amazing it has a ‘Man’s Day’ on the last Friday of every month.
Port Chalmers also has this great Lilliput library for all the Tolkien fans.
Lilliput Library in Port Chalmers. Photo: Hamish McNeilly
Tolkien aside, the library had all the usual suspects: James Patterson, Danielle Steel and Dean Kootz.
St Leonards
I saw this. The end.
Sawyers Bay
The local school surely has the best playground in Dunedin. Pump track, hamster wheel, decent basketball court and a community fruit and vege stand.
Stay tuned for more suburban adventures!
And now for the news.
Here is a harrowing case worth noting, as it was a call which cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The woman, who I agreed not to name, received a call from a person saying they were from the BNZ fraud department.
‘‘I just feel so terrible now,’’ the Dunedin woman said.
‘‘They caught me at a vulnerable moment.’’
That call a fortnight ago, came days after her Covid booster shot which had left her feeling tired.
She felt much worse a few days later when she discovered tens of thousand of dollars had been cleaned out of an account.
‘‘It has been a terrible time, really.’’
She said the male caller told her that her ‘IP location was not quite right'.
The caller, who was calling from an 09 number and gave his address as being in Auckland, then said he could install an item on her laptop to rectify the issue.
Days later she checked her internet banking: “Oh, my God’’.
‘‘We’ve lost a lot of money.’’
Rick Bourne, officer in charge of the Southern District Police Investigation Support Unit, said phone scams involving people wanting to access computers were not new.
But a new trend had emerged nationally over the last few months, with the call showing a New Zealand area code.
Investigations by police showed those numbers were sold legitimately overseas, but were bought by gangs and organised crime groups to con unsuspecting New Zealanders with cold calls.
That money could be transferred to several accounts overseas and was effectively ‘money laundering’.
‘‘This is not a lone case, but it is so, so sad,’’ Bourne said.
The chance of getting the money back was slim, unless the bank was notified almost immediately.
A recent case in the Southern District resulted in a person losing almost $100,000, but quick action saw the majority of those funds returned.
His advice was to never take a cold call, otherwise record the number and ‘‘put the phone down’’ and then check with your bank.
Compounding the woman's stress was her bank not returning calls and effectively walking away from her.
‘‘I just don’t think the banks are listening.’’
She was concerned her money was ‘‘just gone . . . like that’’.
It was believed a firewall had been remotely removed from her laptop, and it had since been commercially cleaned.
I had some lovely feedback about the Little John story. I may have a possible follow-up, you will be the first to know.
In honour of my stalking of a fish n chip shop menu scoop, here is the Dunedin song of the week from Opposite Sex
And here is 14 minutes you will never get back:
Have a great week, please email me on hamish.mcneilly@stuff.co.nz if you have any hidden gems in your suburb . . .