As we drove into the coastal town of Oamaru on a sweltering South Island Sunday afternoon my first impressions were of a rather prim, nay immaculate place. The wide streets (something I loved about New Zealand) every house pristine and clean with a well-manicured garden...no there'd be nothing out of the ordinary here.
Except then I discover that Oamaru is the Steampunk capital of the world.
Now I know nothing about Steam Punk beyond the fact that it featured in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, and seemed to consist of odd-looking bits of scrap metal and vaguely familiar chunks of machinery welded into an unfamiliar whole.
I've had to look it up...
Steampunk has always been first and foremost a literary genre, or least a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy that includes social or technological aspects of the 19th century (the steam) usually with some deconstruction of, reimagining of, or rebellion against parts of it (the punk)...
There's a lot of gothic-type action going on at Steampunk HQ ...
The more I looked the more complicated and uncertain it all became.
I'm not sure Steampunk really knows exactly what Steampunk actually is, there seem to be as many different genres as definitions, but I loved the quirkiness and the way it had dispelled my early assumptions about Oamaru, and I especially liked The Portal which has to be the most mind-boggling cupboard I have ever stood in...not that I've stood in that many.
All a trick of mirrors and lights but this was infinity and then some, and quite beyond the mind's eye to comprehend..
whilst the drop seemed precipitous but was actually non-existent...
Brain still slightly discombobulated from The Portal we fell into the most soothing and memorable place...
Now I've been in a lot of bookshops in my time, and having said I was a bit disappointed by the book shops that I came across in New Zealand here was an exception. I am not sure I have ever met a more genial and welcoming bookseller than Bill, whose shop Adventure Books specialises in second-hand books on travel, mountaineering, exploration, Antarctica and Polar anything, nautical, natural history and true adventure. Well that was the next hour accounted for...
Do you know of Robert Macfarlane's books I asked Bill...
'Oh I'm a huge fan,' he replied before heading to the shelf and finding a copy of Mountains of the Mind...
I don't often do it but I just couldn't stop myself saying 'I've interviewed him...'
'You know Robert Macfarlane?' said Bill incredulously...
'Well sort of,' I said and recounted that wonderful session at Port Eliot Festival a few years ago.
And looking back I think it is safe to say we are huge Robert Macfarlane fans here too and here, and here, and here, and here, oh yes and here, and here, and goodness me, more here and not forgetting here. I think this might actually constitute some form of blogstalking of an author.
It's fair to say that Bill is something of an expert on all things Antarctica. He has visited several times and now given a home in his shop to this...
It is a replica of the James Caird, made for the film Shackleton's Captain, about Frank Worsley and the heroic rescue voyage after the ship Endeavour had been trapped and crushed by ice in 1916. Leaving twenty-two behind on the ice four men sailed 800 miles in sixteen days in the original boat before reaching South Georgia, where they then trekked for thirty-six hours to a Norwegian whaling station to raise the alarm. It was three more months before those left behind could be rescued and by some miracle all were still alive.
By now I am slightly overwhelmed by Oamaru, so full of surprises has it been, to say nothing of the choice and range of books in Bill's shop, and so cheered by meeting such a lovely man, but if only I could find something on bookbinding for Bookhound, who is loving his class and his new craft and making very nice things indeed, more of which soon..
So I couldn't quite believe my eyes as we stepped out of Adventure Books and saw this right opposite..
I mean tell me...when do you EVER see a sign like that, an actual bookbinder with a shop.
Sadly the shop was closed and no sign of Michael O'Brien, but that didn't stop us peering in the window and winging the pics across to home as we stood there...
And if Bookhound had been with me I have no doubt he would have been beating the door down and applying for this...
But actually none of this, exciting though it may be, was the real reason for visiting Oamaru.
I was there to visit the house of a writer I love...
Time to go and find 56 Eden Street...
Meanwhile perhaps someone can explain steampunk...
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