The scenery might have been imported as well. Were it not for the suspiciously Antipodean touches en route from the airport to town, I might have believed I was driving through the Peak District or the lowlands of Scotland. Rolling hills and golf courses on either side of the road, with each new landmark being pointed out by Tony, my comically lugubrious taxi driver. It was the bright yellow gumboot on the hard shoulder that did it for me. Apparently, my guide informed me, it had been lying there unclaimed for all of two days.

The pace of life out here, I surmised from that comment, is pretty relaxed. "We're going to hit rush hour head-on," added Tony. "It shouldn't worry you too much." Sure enough, we chugged through town with scarcely a break for a traffic light, past the sprawling Carisbrooke Stadium where the Otago Highlanders are due to take on the Waratahs on Saturday night, and on into the centre of town. Dunedin is the fifth-largest city in the country, and second only to Christchurch on the South Island. But with a population of 120,000, it is barely a quarter of the size of Edinburgh, the city from which it derived its name.

Dunedin's Scottish influence is abundantly clear, and not just from the weather and scenery. Propped up in the window of the first bookshop I passed was a copy of the 2008 Broons annual, a comic-book I rarely imagined I'd find so far south of the border. Or have I journeyed so far south I've ended up in the world's northern-most reaches? Right now, it's a little hard to tell.