This is on a walkway where you can catch a glimpse of the oldest house in Dunedin. Peer over the fence and then look underfoot. A 50 ml container. Bring your own pen.
Ferntree Lodge dates from 1849 and is Dunedins oldest surviving house and probably New Zealand’s oldest ponga log structure. Its an historic place http://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/368 A mock-Tudor house was later added, built in 1902. http://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/2152
In 1849 John Bortin and Robert Murray built a two storey cottage for Julius Jeffreys. http://www.airgale.com.au/jeffreys/d4.htm He arrived on the John Wickliffe (and was the son of the surgeon who invented the respirator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Jeffreys ).
It was constructed from upright squared ponga logs, culled from the surrounding bush, plastered together with clay. The whole was then contained and faced by wooden framing. The roof was timber shingles. Use of ponga logs as a building material was common in Otago at the time, adopted from Maori. The original cottage had five main rooms - three downstairs and two upstairs. The rooms were small and the staircase was no more than 60 centimetres wide. Under the steep pitch of the roof a bathroom was later added.
It was later owned by Alexander Thompson, of Thompson & Co cordials, and in recent times by fraudster Michael Swann.