Janet Frame Walkway

This walkway is unique because it takes in buildings and places that are significant in the life of Janet Frame. Many of the buildings inspired her writing.

The journey starts at the the Information Centre, where you can take pamphlets about the track and Janet Frame herself. Next comes the Museum. The upstairs area was the library when Janet Frame was a child. She was quite scared of the librarian but that didn't stop her visiting every day. Next there is the Majestic Movie theatre where she went to watch movies as a child. She loved watching movies here.

Janet wrote about the police station in her book, Owls Do Cry: "With dread and delight.... we hoped to see peering from the small barred window of the prison in Severn Street, a paragon of a criminal ... sad and penitent peering through the barred window into Severn Street". The walk then passes through the gardens where it goes past a dairy, where Janet thought the owner was a gossip.

Next you will see the remains of her childhood house in the middle of dense bush, close to the wallaby park. When Janet was a child she would spend her days running around the fields and swimming in the Oamaru creek. Now you continue your journey, through the Oamaru Public Gardens. Then you journey under the bridge that runs over the Oamaru creek. Your walk will end at the Criterion Hotel.

The track is not hard to walk and only takes about one and a half hours. This track is quite different from others because it focuses on buildings and places of significance in the life of Dunedin-born writer, Janet Frame. Many of these places that inspired her are in her books and poems.

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