18 March 2009
Our day begins fairly early today and we pack up our things and reluctantly leave Turner Lodge and Queenstown on our next bus. We eat breakfast and stuff corned beef into buns for the road and leave early for our four hours or so trip.
Onward! Saddle the horses! It is wet and dim today, but I am excited about the next part. There will be seals and interesting birds…
We snooze for much of the first leg of our journey, but there are a few things I notice as we pass through, light as shadows creeping in the dusk.
We arrive in a place called Cromwell, which is of little note, except for the fruit. We make a stop (I love the way this country works – it’s so random!) at a wayside fruit stall. Well, not really a fruit stall, more a big barn full of fruit and interesting tasties. Cromwell is apparently famed for its fruit and, as if to prove this, as we leave I notice a selection of massive fibreglass fruit on the other side of the roundabout. Apples and pears loom roundly by the side of the road; it is most disconcerting.
I snooze some more.
We pass the Clyde Dam, which was very expensive and controversial. Clyde lost a lot when the Dam was built; heritage, culture and homes and the driver who tells us this seems very saddened by it. I suspect he may have links to the area. The dam itself is not particularly prepossessing, though the large body of water behind it is impressive, stretching out, slick and grey in the hazy light, rugged peaks surrounding it on every side, looming darkly around us, making nodding acquaintance with the snowy mountains beyond. More mountains and landscape pass; a cow-trimmed weeping willow stands at the edge of a paddock mournfully in the drizzle, seated cows beneath it.
Alexandra we pass through and I see, to my astonishment, that there is an enormous clock set into the mountain – several times bigger than Big Ben and infinitely more impressive. How they arranged the clockwork, cranks and drives I can’t imagine, but it must have been quite a feat to put it all together and have it in situ. Poor Alexandra is apparently in a large geographical bowl so, despite the apparent freshness here, when it is cold, all the local pollution slides down the mountains and lands on Alexandra. We crest a hill and see more snow-capped peaks beneath a steely-grey sky. The peaks and furrows of the landscape are dotted with white. We must be quite high here too, the peaks don’t seem to be very far above us. I half expect to see Heidi skipping down a mountain with a goat or two in tow! There is much switchbacking up and down like a roller coaster – this is not a journey for the easily travel-sickened!
Soon we are somewhere flat again, but we end up stuck in a queue. It seems that somewhere they are blasting something so we can’t move off and pass yet; we may be here a while! The driver leans out of his window and we all crane to try and see what is happening, but nothing can be seen, just some odd noises and some dusty wisps.
I snooze some more…
We arrive in Lawrence for morning tea. Lawrence was fleetingly a big gold rush town because of the valley known as Gabriel’s Gully which was particularly rich for a short while. Lawrence is very quaint and has a café called the Wild Walnut, who make all their own cake etc. It’s really good! There is a nice little range of local crafts here too, and it smells good, faintly of previous baking, faintly of tea and a little of gingham, teddy bears, craft shops and the WI.
Andrew and I have a pot of tea and some good cakes… Andrew’s is chocolate and I have a rich fruity thing. We just have time to finish our tea before the coach is ready to go and we reluctantly tear ourselves away from the cake-scented comfort of the Wild Walnut.
Back on the coach, the wet miles pass quickly and we are soon approaching Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South. As we enter it, it is easy to see why this is a perfect name for the place. The soaring, wet mountains would feel at home in any Scottish highland and the glowering clouds (which have at least stopped raining) could have been imported straight from the wild cliffs of Britain. It feels very different from the other parts of NZ we have already seen so far. Dunedin is very compact, relatively old and the atmosphere here is weightier; it has more gravitas than elsewhere. The masses of heavy stone architecture and Scottish quirks do nothing to dispel the feeling that we have accidentally hopped in a transporter back to Scotland!
We have a small, simple map and a street name to find our car. We find the street with little trouble, but realise, too late, that it is enormous and we have no idea which end of it the car hire office will be. We spot the Cadbury’s factory, looming purply in the distance and decide not to go there – the chocolate’s awful and we could do that at home anyway! It is rather fun to see it in the distance though. It is warmer now. Dunedin, because of its location in the mountains, is truly a city of four seasons in one day.
However, we are not really in the mood for exploring just yet as we are tired and want to find our car so we can explore properly. Eventually, we find a pub on a corner which is open and serving drinks, though not actually food. The landlady here, a bit rough around the edges, but fantastically lovely underneath, calls the car hire place for us and happily serves us drinks while we wait to be picked up in our car. The little lass from National (her name is Clare!) is not long and we are soon piled carefully into a tiny Hyundai Getz with our luggage. She drives us back to the office and we fill out forms, hand over licences, photocopy things, promise to be good, sign things, promise to give them money if we’re not good, poke the poor little car to make sure she’s good too and inspect her for any obvious damage… It’s a very Kiwi attitude that dictates that fair wear and tear to a car is acceptable in terms of losing the deposit. Any honestly- and accidentally-won dings and scratches would be of little consequence I understand. Still, we have no intention of handing her back scarred and battered if we can possibly help it, so we sign the paperwork and scramble in to inspect her properly. She is very comfortable for a small car and has everything we need and a couple of things we want. She also seems to have a small fairy in the dashboard. This fairy has two bells, one in each hand and she waves them about in panic if you open the door without switching off the car.
Wait!
Don’t leave me!
Stooooop!
*bingle, bingle, bingle*
She is accompanied in her job by a goblin with a gong behind the other side of the dashboard who clearly has very good sight and makes bonging noises if you reverse towards anything…
The noises made by this car are by far the most genteel and delicate of all the beeps, bongs and bingles I’ve heard cars make. We have a chuckle over the fairies in the dashboard and then decide to go and have a look at Dunedin Station properly, as it is rather amazing.
We find a parking spot near it (that would never happen in Edinburgh!) on the octagonal road which nestles protectively around it and hop out, corned beef buns at the ready.
Our day begins fairly early today and we pack up our things and reluctantly leave Turner Lodge and Queenstown on our next bus. We eat breakfast and stuff corned beef into buns for the road and leave early for our four hours or so trip.
Onward! Saddle the horses! It is wet and dim today, but I am excited about the next part. There will be seals and interesting birds…
We snooze for much of the first leg of our journey, but there are a few things I notice as we pass through, light as shadows creeping in the dusk.
We arrive in a place called Cromwell, which is of little note, except for the fruit. We make a stop (I love the way this country works – it’s so random!) at a wayside fruit stall. Well, not really a fruit stall, more a big barn full of fruit and interesting tasties. Cromwell is apparently famed for its fruit and, as if to prove this, as we leave I notice a selection of massive fibreglass fruit on the other side of the roundabout. Apples and pears loom roundly by the side of the road; it is most disconcerting.
I snooze some more.
We pass the Clyde Dam, which was very expensive and controversial. Clyde lost a lot when the Dam was built; heritage, culture and homes and the driver who tells us this seems very saddened by it. I suspect he may have links to the area. The dam itself is not particularly prepossessing, though the large body of water behind it is impressive, stretching out, slick and grey in the hazy light, rugged peaks surrounding it on every side, looming darkly around us, making nodding acquaintance with the snowy mountains beyond. More mountains and landscape pass; a cow-trimmed weeping willow stands at the edge of a paddock mournfully in the drizzle, seated cows beneath it.
Alexandra we pass through and I see, to my astonishment, that there is an enormous clock set into the mountain – several times bigger than Big Ben and infinitely more impressive. How they arranged the clockwork, cranks and drives I can’t imagine, but it must have been quite a feat to put it all together and have it in situ. Poor Alexandra is apparently in a large geographical bowl so, despite the apparent freshness here, when it is cold, all the local pollution slides down the mountains and lands on Alexandra. We crest a hill and see more snow-capped peaks beneath a steely-grey sky. The peaks and furrows of the landscape are dotted with white. We must be quite high here too, the peaks don’t seem to be very far above us. I half expect to see Heidi skipping down a mountain with a goat or two in tow! There is much switchbacking up and down like a roller coaster – this is not a journey for the easily travel-sickened!
Soon we are somewhere flat again, but we end up stuck in a queue. It seems that somewhere they are blasting something so we can’t move off and pass yet; we may be here a while! The driver leans out of his window and we all crane to try and see what is happening, but nothing can be seen, just some odd noises and some dusty wisps.
I snooze some more…
We arrive in Lawrence for morning tea. Lawrence was fleetingly a big gold rush town because of the valley known as Gabriel’s Gully which was particularly rich for a short while. Lawrence is very quaint and has a café called the Wild Walnut, who make all their own cake etc. It’s really good! There is a nice little range of local crafts here too, and it smells good, faintly of previous baking, faintly of tea and a little of gingham, teddy bears, craft shops and the WI.
Andrew and I have a pot of tea and some good cakes… Andrew’s is chocolate and I have a rich fruity thing. We just have time to finish our tea before the coach is ready to go and we reluctantly tear ourselves away from the cake-scented comfort of the Wild Walnut.
Back on the coach, the wet miles pass quickly and we are soon approaching Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South. As we enter it, it is easy to see why this is a perfect name for the place. The soaring, wet mountains would feel at home in any Scottish highland and the glowering clouds (which have at least stopped raining) could have been imported straight from the wild cliffs of Britain. It feels very different from the other parts of NZ we have already seen so far. Dunedin is very compact, relatively old and the atmosphere here is weightier; it has more gravitas than elsewhere. The masses of heavy stone architecture and Scottish quirks do nothing to dispel the feeling that we have accidentally hopped in a transporter back to Scotland!
We have a small, simple map and a street name to find our car. We find the street with little trouble, but realise, too late, that it is enormous and we have no idea which end of it the car hire office will be. We spot the Cadbury’s factory, looming purply in the distance and decide not to go there – the chocolate’s awful and we could do that at home anyway! It is rather fun to see it in the distance though. It is warmer now. Dunedin, because of its location in the mountains, is truly a city of four seasons in one day.
However, we are not really in the mood for exploring just yet as we are tired and want to find our car so we can explore properly. Eventually, we find a pub on a corner which is open and serving drinks, though not actually food. The landlady here, a bit rough around the edges, but fantastically lovely underneath, calls the car hire place for us and happily serves us drinks while we wait to be picked up in our car. The little lass from National (her name is Clare!) is not long and we are soon piled carefully into a tiny Hyundai Getz with our luggage. She drives us back to the office and we fill out forms, hand over licences, photocopy things, promise to be good, sign things, promise to give them money if we’re not good, poke the poor little car to make sure she’s good too and inspect her for any obvious damage… It’s a very Kiwi attitude that dictates that fair wear and tear to a car is acceptable in terms of losing the deposit. Any honestly- and accidentally-won dings and scratches would be of little consequence I understand. Still, we have no intention of handing her back scarred and battered if we can possibly help it, so we sign the paperwork and scramble in to inspect her properly. She is very comfortable for a small car and has everything we need and a couple of things we want. She also seems to have a small fairy in the dashboard. This fairy has two bells, one in each hand and she waves them about in panic if you open the door without switching off the car.
Wait!
Don’t leave me!
Stooooop!
*bingle, bingle, bingle*
She is accompanied in her job by a goblin with a gong behind the other side of the dashboard who clearly has very good sight and makes bonging noises if you reverse towards anything…
The noises made by this car are by far the most genteel and delicate of all the beeps, bongs and bingles I’ve heard cars make. We have a chuckle over the fairies in the dashboard and then decide to go and have a look at Dunedin Station properly, as it is rather amazing.
We find a parking spot near it (that would never happen in Edinburgh!) on the octagonal road which nestles protectively around it and hop out, corned beef buns at the ready.
The rain has let up and the sky is a bright and ungloomy grey. The building, set into its own lawn, is bright and beautiful for a station. It boasts a fine set of horizontal stripes up each of its towers and along each wall and we are struck by the stripey, Gothic beauty of it as we enter. We are stopped, just in the doorway, by a petite and eloquent little Japanese lady who asks us to take her photograph. She is soberly but prettily dressed and perches nonchalantly against a beautiful pillar as she poses for Andrew to take her photograph. She then asks if we can take another one or two and (after another delicate and thoughtful pose by a step) I am reassured that she, as all the Asians seem to do when on holiday, lapses back into the seemingly traditional pose of cheesy grin and victory fingers! She thanks us prettily and disappears. We head back on in up the wide steps and through the imposing decorated doors. The floor is mosaic tiled with images of pertinent trains, a theme reflected in the stained glass windows high above the concourse and in the tiles and carved wall panelling at ground level. I hobble up the stairs to get a better view of this impressive interior. It is rather fun to watch people go by on errands of their own, some striding purposefully towards trains, others, like us, just standing gazing at whatever caught their interest…
We have eventually had our fill of the station and head back to our little Hyundai, which is still waiting patiently, with its fairy, for our return. As Andrew familiarises himself with the controls (we anticipate the wipers being particularly necessary soon!) I see a man pass intently past the car. He is small and reminds me a little of my late maternal grandfather; intent, a little wobbly but very smartly dressed with tie and pullover. But the thing that strikes me most about this chap (which may have sparked the resemblance!) is not what he is wearing, but what he is carrying.
It’s a book.
Not just any book.
A large book.
No, not a large book.
A gargantuan and antique book, filled with the weight of words it carries, leather bound and possibly once even gold embossed. I would be unable to lift such a tome (easily two feet long), yet he has it caught easily under one arm, this bookworm, in the same way that a hunter might carry home a huge prize, or an ant a sweet and tasty morsel larger than its own body. I want to run after him, to ask what it is that he carries, what ledger of souls it is that has been entrusted to him, but he is there only briefly, walking speedily, and disappears through a small door marked with official lettering where I cannot follow…
As we have a schedule to keep, we depart fairly swiftly from Dunedin town centre now (though intently admiring the architecture along the way). This is exciting. We are not actually staying in Dunedin, but in a little village near Larnach Castle, from whence we shall sally for to find the Royal Albatross! Andrew hasn’t told me where we’re staying, but I suspect a quaint bed and breakfast nestling feudally somewhere near the castle. We shall see. In the meantime I stare out of the window as we wiggle around the peninsula. It is very pretty – rugged and wild, grey and damp, and ultimately gorgeous. There are shags and gulls aplenty, some perching all over a little boat house, which immediately becomes known at the ‘shag hut’. They funny-looking things, cormorants, all eyes, wings and oddly-angled neck until you realise that these are vital tools of their trade, spotting a fish, then angling themselves into a fatal arrow to slice neatly and silently into the grey water and pluck out a glistening fish.
We wind onwards along the coastline on this little spit of land and come to signs for Larnach. I keep my finger on the map and watch where we are going. This lovely area only just feels colonised; it is still largely wild and the landscape seems to buck like a reluctant and part-trained horse under the weight of the crops. We turn off up to Larnach and the road is tiny and empty, winding up through the hills. We seem to have run out of village and I am a little puzzled by the lack of feudal-looking bed and breakfasts now…
Then I realise as we round the corner and see the sign in front of us.
We’re not staying in a B and B.
We’re staying at the Castle!
Wheeeee!
:D
I bounce.
The Castle is down a long driveway and we are greeted by Peter, the gatekeeper, in his little hut by the gate. We feel special as we are allowed in after hours as it were, when all the tourists have gone. We drive up the long, lush, verdant driveway and admire the tall trees in the murky weather and briefly see the very Scottishness of it all. We pass the castle itself, an imposing building, ginger-coloured against the grey sky, clearly built in the style favoured by the English manorial lords just after castles had become statements of grandeur rather than fortified dwellings. We head onward for the Lodge, where we are sleeping for the night. We are met, after a short wait, by a tall, slim gentleman who points out the breakfast room in the Stable across the way and shows us to our room. It’s gorgeous, the Sea Room, looking out with two windows and a balcony over the wild, free, grey waters surrounding the peninsula. Trees rustle and drip beneath the balcony and the ubiquitous and familiar grey mountains loom amiably in the distance over the waters. We quickly drop our belongings, trying to be tidy as the room is so lovely, and scramble together bird-hunting gear. We’re off to find seals and albatross! We walk back down the path again to the front gate, where we will be picked up by the minibus. On the way we see the Castle again, marvelling at its grandeur. It screams 19th century Gothic revival with every pore and demands photographs… I silently promise them for later… The whole thing is very Scottish, even down to the light drizzle. We are high on a hill here; the area around Larnach apparently even has its own microclimate, almost as if Someone intended it to be a little patch of Scotland plopped in the middle of the Antipodes. It is no wonder the original Scots settled here in preference to the rest of NZ!
We walk past the viewpoint, a little railed patio, and marvel at the silvery clouds drifting by in the grey beneath. We wander further up and spot a Fly Agaric by the road, just sitting there, bold as brass, under a tree on the verge. It’s massive, bigger than a dinner plate and considerably more toxic. We photograph it (and the two babies nestling beneath it like little fairy stools!) profusely and spot a few more further down, so we bounce off to point our shutters at those too… A young woman with a wheelbarrow passes us. She has dark green ear defenders carelessly looped over one ear and onto her shoulder and she looks up from her barrow and smiles, inquiring what we have found. I tell her we have found toadstools and she is instantly intent and eager, curious about the little monsters we are inspecting. It turns out she is an under-gardener here, an apprentice, and she is learning a lot about plants, but has not learnt about toadstools yet; I tell her everything I know about Fly Agarics (which to be fair, isn’t a lot!) and she drinks it in avidly. She is clearly in the right job!
She leaves us to it as she ambles on with her barrow and we finish photographing and walk briskly down to the front gate. A sea fog is rolling in, silvering the late summer ferns with droplets and making everything pleasantly lush and damp. We arrive at the front gate a little while later and we check with the gatekeeper that we haven’t missed our bus. He hasn’t seen it, so we wander around in the light drizzle and admire the grounds. We soon spot our apprentice gardener again; she is deadheading a large plant near the front gate which has finished flowering for the year. She seems quite happy at this thankless task but greets our appearance with renewed enthusiasm. She’s a very sweet and friendly lass and we chat about gardening and pets and travelling. It turns out that she was born and raised in the area around Larnach and loves living here. She has lots of animals, which she goes home to visit at lunchtimes and is awe-struck when we tell her where we are from. She is happy here, but clearly has a yearning to travel. Her eyes grow wide as we talk of England and London and she absorbs all I can tell her about Singapore and Australia with youthful enthusiasm. We are almost sad to leave this charming little person when our bus arrives but she cheerfully waves us off and hopes we have fun before turning happily back to her plant.
The bus driver and his colleague are both very friendly and excited about the trip. This is infectious and passes on to us. He is a natural, slightly scruffy, very earthy blond chap with a winning smile and a fun, familiar style. She is an elegant, rugged lady with interesting features an almost disconcertingly wide smile and a short crop. She curls herself around her seat and gives us a running commentary about what we are seeing, with him interjecting happily and cheekily from the driver’s seat.
We learn that the peninsula was volcanic. This is unusual – the north island is almost exclusively volcanic, but the south island is largely glacial. We pass Harbour Cove Hill, which I believe is the one we can see from our room. It looms in the distance over the grey waters. A little further on we are shown a peaceful little spot, which is the way to a Buddhist shrine/sturpa.
As we approach our destination, we are told about the problems created when the Europeans first arrived. We cut down the trees for farming purposes etc, and this has created problems for both penguins and their predators, the sea lions. Penguins can be quite shy creatures and need a certain level of ground cover to be comfortable and sometimes even to moult or mate. Sea lions have issues with this lack of cover too – when the mothers want to leave their pups in safety while they hunt, there is no longer anywhere for them to stay, leaving them vulnerable. Just another sad reflection of how badly we have affected the environment around us.
Still, as environments go, this one is still pretty unspoilt. We drive on, through the oddly enticing grey mizzle and peer out of the windows at the glorious countryside. Our guides provide us with binoculars and a running commentary on the creatures we see around us. We make several unscheduled and excited stops in the middle of roads, with our lady guide talking animatedly at us and our chirpy driver saying that he was sure it wasn’t safe to stop quite in this spot on the road and could we move on a bit now please?
The lady responds that this is the only place that we can stop and look or we’ll miss them, can’t he see that Royal Spoonbill, just over there, next to the wader- and there’s another one, right near it…
With a lot of this random halting, excited pointing and much peering through binoculars we see black waders, grey herons, shags, back swans and, of course, the two gorgeous Royal Spoonbills, neat in grey, white and black, with their massive, bulbous beaks sweeping carefully and deliberately through the swirling grey water for food.
Fortunately for these birds, the land here is all Maori.
When white people first came to these shores, there was harmony. Fifty years prior to the arrival of the first white settlers, the land had been adopted by the likes of sealers and whalers, and there was much for them to hunt. These first men here were often accepted into the local communities, they lived with them, were friends with them, became part of the local way of life. Some even married local Maori girls and had little half-caste children. This had become a happy norm. Then the white settlers came, arriving in droves, and the land-grabbing began. No more living harmony with nature and the locals, this was all about colonialist annexation. And, sadly, there was very little the sealers and whalers could do for their new friends. However, this particular tract of land has been given back to the Maori community and is largely a safe haven for birds and twitchers, among other strange beasts.
Not that the sealers and whalers didn’t bring their own problems. They hunted Right Whales, which are the most commonly caught, for their blubber and baleen, and ambergris when they found it. Right whales are fat, slow and float close to the surface, making them an easy target. This species fuelled many, many city lights and their baleen made ladies’ tiny waists even smaller... Baleen was, for many years, the principal ingredient of corsetry. That so noble a beast should die for a woman’s wasp waist!
We arrive at the Albatross Centre and wander out towards the cliff edge with our blonde gentleman guide. He is a lively chap, friendly, keen, fun and terminally scruffy, as if he has been surfing and his hair and attitude have set that way, despite the chill in the air.
We look out over the empty, grey sea, peering through the low clouds and see gulls wheel by and the odd shag flap past on the prowl for some dinner. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but it is interesting all the same for there are plenty of other beasties in the sea below us too: seals, sea lions, cormorants and gulls. Our guide tells us about the lifestyle of the enormous birds we had hoped to see. They rarely have more than one chick, and this chick becomes enormous on the rich diet it is fed. Albatrosses feed their young regurgitated fish, like most seabirds, but when the egg hatches, and for a while after that, both parents will produce a rich milky substance from their crop to feed the baby. This makes it fat. Sometimes other babies will try to muscle in on the feeding if they are left at home alone too long (the albatross parents can both be away for a period of weeks, which is why the babies are so fat, to cope with the lean times), and sometimes they too will be fed in the confusion, but are then mercilessly attacked and battered to teach them a lesson!
We decide to head back for the coach and make our way to our next destination when there is a yell from our lady guide further along the cliff:
“Albatross!”
“Where??”
We crane to see, peering all around us in the thinning mist.
“There!” cries our gentleman, pointing out to sea. I struggle to see in the grainy bright light, fumbling for my binoculars about my neck. A small shape floats by in the distance, a long haul flier trying to come home, just waiting for the right thermals to gain enough altitude to soar over the cliff. Albatrosses never flap. They cannot gain altitude by flapping. If they flap, they just go a bit faster, never any higher. Because of this, they often wheel around, judging the cliff’s height, then heading out to sea again to find a thermal, before wheeling back in to try the cliff again, time after time. But their long wings are what enable them to stay aloft for weeks on end, sometimes travelling thousands of miles before coming home again. They are a true wanderer, rarely touching down except to breed.
Our albatross is clearly on the altitude-gathering part of his circle. He heads inwards, flying closer as we watch. At one point he disappears behind a headland, to our disappointment. But he is soon spotted again,
“There it is!”
Below us, standing agog on the cliff, he glides, soaring effortlessly on our level, close enough to see every detail of this unique seabird. He passes below us, black beady eye watching the waves behind his pale pink beak. They are neat, stocky birds, massive and elegant, and glorious in flight.
This close you wonder how the Ancient Mariner ever managed to walk with one of these massive creatures tied about his neck.
This close you can see how it was believed that they were souls in flight.
This close you can get a fantastic photograph!
I am privileged to have seen this creature, and from what our guide says, he will be back.
We watch, scanning the grey horizon with eager eyes for his return and are rewarded by another one too! Two parents are coming home with food for their chicks! We watch as the two of them take turns circling up, each time slightly higher, but never quite making it, wheeling away at the last moment and skimming just too low along the cliff edge before us. Eventually one of them has gained enough altitude that she disappears triumphantly behind the lighthouse on the horizon and is gone. Her mate, for so we assume, is not far behind, disappearing from view shortly after. We wait for a while on the cliff, but the chill creeps in and we head for the Albatross Centre itself for a hot drink and some food.
Hot chocolate and nice quiche later, we head back out for the minibus. Suddenly ther is another yell and I nearly drop my chocolate,
“Albatross! Overhead!!”
I just manage to wedge my chocolate between some stones by my feet and look up to see as enormous, pointed-winged shape sweep slowly and majestically over head. I gaze at it, not taking my eyes from it as I fumble for my camera. It is not the only one, to my surprise. We are treated to an epic fly-past from these sea-bound juggernauts, three of them, flying near to each other, passing us in quick succession. It is common for teenage albatrosses to group together and fly around in bachelor groups.
And we have just seen one.
Bonus!
Next stop sea mammals…
On our way to the next point, which will be a colony of fur seals we pass through various interesting creatures’ homes. We see Paradise Shelducks off to the left; the male has a dark head and the female white. They mate for life. We see a kingfisher too, a little bright dart, and a field full of Pukeka, those funny little New Zealand birds that look like a parrot crossed with a chicken; they have long legs, more like a small wader than a chicken, but eat their food held in their claws, like a parrot. They are friendly, common little things and they have communal nests, so they all share the risks and care of the babies.
While we travel, I chat to the chap next to me. He is a young Dutch chap called Pauo and is interesting, bright and intelligent. He has a large SLR and I envisage a long discussion between him and Andrew as he waxes lyrical about lenses… He is currently on a trip with an organisation whose acronym is WWOOF, which I think stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms – I gather you get food, lodging and pocket money in return for farm labour… Which in NZ would be rather fun! He is clearly enjoying it here; the atmosphere and surroundings certainly seem to be suiting him. He has picked up some local culture too, having been here a few months, and as we discuss life, the universe and everything, he tells me a local legend about sandflies…
The glorious Sounds were made by one of the Maori demigods as a place of beauty and rest. The underworld gods saw it and thought it was beautiful too. They created sandflies to teem across the Sounds in droves so that humankind would not linger in this heavenly place too long, but leave and remember their own mortality.
We break off our conversation to whip out our binoculars as we round a corner along the coast. There are, in this sheltered bay, two more Royal Spoonbills and two dainty, neat oystercatchers. We also see a harrier high overhead, nearly lost in the thick fog slightly inland.
Convolvulus clings to a slope like pagan white decorations in a wedding veil of fog.
Suddenly, amongst the peace of the coastal fog, there is a flock of sheep!
A sea of wool surges in front of the bus, blocking our way entirely. We stare out at the damp landscape as we wait for the tide to pass. They part, like some mythical sea, and we are on our way again. We pass some wind-blasted trees which have grown crabbed and crippled in the teeth of the harsh weather and all bend, twisted, gnarled and crooked, away from the sea
We arrive at a gravelly car park and the sky is clearing a little, though it is still mainly grey. A bunny near the horizon lopes off at high speed towards a sheep which eyes it disdainfully, both in silhouette. Our guide takes us onward on foot. There are two of us who are not too keen on hills, and he inquires after us most solicitously, making sure we can manage it. He hangs back with me as we head down a grassy bank, concerned that I wince every time I step on my knee… But I came to see fur seals and I am blinking well not going to let an errant collection of gristle and tendons stop me!
A distant, shallow beach hoves into view through the murk and I give my knees a severe telling-off and follow the rest of the group down a staircase cut into the coastal soil.
My knees are forgotten as I stare out over the selection of rockpools which comprise the fur seal colony. The seals have clearly made this their home, and chosen well. There are small ledges to snooze on, big rocks to bask on, little pools to practice in and bigger pools in which to ride the swells for fun. There are few adults around at the moment, being that it is daytime and they have gone out to fish, but the babies more than make up for it; they are delightful. Of varying ages, they are scattered around the rocks in little clusters, some snoozing like little fat, velvet balloons, others playing in the rock pools, bobbing about and snapping at each other playfully. One little one, clearly still very young, is on his own in a pool, bobbing about with what appears to be a feather. His mate comes along and they wrangle for a moment over who has the glory of carrying the feather and the original owner wins, wrapping the feather around his nose in his triumph and then shaking it away, ducking and weaving beneath it and coming up underneath to grab it in his mouth once again. I watch him frolic for a good while and then cast my eye over the rest of them, some babies and asleep, others almost ready to go into the real sea. Apparently fur seals aren’t born innately ready to swim, they learn this from their parents and other adults, so this little collection are sensible to keep themselves out of the way of the worst of the sea and weather. Another little one catches my eye, right beneath us, and so close we can see his little beady brown eyes looking at us curiously. He is sucking his flipper when I first see him, but then turns his nose towards us to get a better look, forgetting his flipper in his curiosity.
Eventually, we have had enough of the seals, though they are delightful ad I could have observed them for hours… We head back up the steps, my knee complaining less on the way up than on the way down, but I still find myself at the back with the other lady who dislikes hills again!
There is a bit more of a walk before we arrive at another downward slope. I eye it with some trepidation as the beach we area aiming for looks rather a long way away. Still, if there are sea lions it will be worth it; there may even be penguins! We wander down towards the sizeable dunes through an area which has been set aside for penguins. IT is being replanted, and there are large spiny and ferny plants to provide shelter under which nests can be built and the moulting penguins hide. They get very miserable and grumpy at this time of year, and who can blame them? It must be rather like having measles and awful PMT at the same time… For two weeks, the penguin just sits… Sits and thinks while his feathers fall out all around him, leaving him looking rather as though he has lost a pillow fight and his conqueror left him sitting sadly in the midst of his own shredded pillow. Sometimes they shuffle a few feet, leaving little sad puddles of feathers behind but more often than not they’ll just sit tight for the duration, sometimes losing up to 6kg… For an 8kg bird that’s quite a lot! The one we have spotted looks mournful and dejected, unsurprisingly, and looks away from us at the sea, sadly. If they were to try and swim like this, they would be submerged and chilled in moments, imagine going swimming without a wetsuit in the cold and wintry ocean. Brrr! There are two more getting ready to moult as we wander down the grassy dunes, sitting sadly under bushes and on grassy patches. One of them hunches off grumpily underneath a fence (through a gap built for the purpose!), looking for all the world like an ancient grandfather trying to pre-empt a visit from the relatives and sneak away to the nice peaceful study to escape the attentions of his daughter-in-law…
Eventually, we arrive on the beach. It is fine silvery sand dotted with crumbs of seaweed and large rocks.
Rocks?
Hang on…
Sea lions!
They are, to our delight, here. Our guide, however, stops us in our tracks and we listen attentively. Sea lions, on the whole, are placid, peaceable creatures where Man is concerned, choosing to ignore us and snooze on in peace. However, our guide also tells us that these slumbering giants are bad tempered, extremely fast if roused and their bite is as toxic as a komodo dragon’s owing to all the collected bacteria within. He advises, no, he orders us to stay together, as stragglers could be at risk, and tells us that, should anything happen, we are to run and he will stay behind to distract them… After all, he says, he signed up for that possibility, we didn’t! A noble, if hopefully unnecessary sentiment.
The sea lions seem sleepy enough as we approach them quietly, sighing luxuriously and turning over occasionally. I have never seen any other animal sleep quite so well or so infectiously; I find myself wanting to yawn and snooze too! There are three of them here, sleeping all jumbled up, head on tail and nose under flipper, the picture of a happy family snoozing on the beach. One is larger than the other two and I assume that he is the male.
However, there are only twenty females (yes, 20) left in New Zealand and they are currently spoken for. So one of the natural habits of the sealions is more prevalent. Generally a young but nearly fully-grown male will collect a ‘harem’ of a few younger males and treat them as girls. He snoozes with them, practices with them and protects them, so as long as the youngsters don’t mind (and ours here seem perfectly content), they get rather a good deal out of the whole thing, having a protector as they transit through the awkward and vulnerable teenage months.
One of the young ones turns over, waving his great flipper in the air and burying his velvet head into his companion’s back. His companion wakes briefly, and makes as if to turn over, but the effort it just too great and he flumps back onto his side again, flailing his flipper about in the air too. A gargantuan snore emanates from their lord and master, and they snooze on, all lumped together like a bunch of humungous, fat, smelly velveteen teddy bears.
We tiptoe on past these slumbering giants as they nuzzle and wave their flippers languorously in the air and make our way down the silvery beach to a little hut at the end. It is a protected viewing area for seeing penguins; hopefully they will grace us with their presence today! Apparently, and we can see from certain marks, the enclosure around this hide has been attacked by sea lions once or twice… Fences and netting are nothing to beats such as these, so we still keep half an eye open towards the beach, where they will slumber until dusk.
But now, we are watching eagerly for penguins…
I have my binoculars at the ready, just in case, and stare out at the pink and grey waves.
The sky is clearing slightly, and will soon be freshly-washed and clear, a fine sky under which to look at things.
Eventually, a penguin emerges.
He is cautious and careful, flipping himself out of the ocean quietly, it seems, and tiptoeing up the beach in short bursts, checking all around him as he does so. Penguins are a number one treat for sea lions, who are an easy match for penguins in terms of speed and are far larger. I begin to feel rather sorry for this little ocean wanderer as he creeps quietly up the beach to relative safety away from the exposed sand.
Soon, though he is joined by another, equally cautious, who does his best to sneak out of the waves on his little flat feet, but is foiled by a flock of noisy seagulls who take off around him, leaving him exposed and paranoid. He takes a while to toddle up the beach, waddling slowly and carefully, hopping daintily over a rivulet. He is clearly too hot at the moment, as he stands, with little hot pink feet (used by the penguins as cooling membrane), and wings outstretched to cool down, before joining his friend on the green.
Penguins are discreet little creatures when it comes to romance. They get to know each other, swap pebbles and peer at each other, that sort of thing, then begin to bond, nuzzling and grooming each other, and nibbling affectionately under one another’s chins. However, it is, apparently, rather difficult to tell the sexes apart, even for the penguins themselves. It is not uncommon for two penguins to be at the bonding stage of courtship before one of them realises his (or her) mistake and then a frantic slapping match ensues! One can almost imagine the conversastion,
‘Mmm… you have nice feathers…’
‘You too, and is that Eau de Poisson I can smell?’
‘Ooh, you are clever, most girls don’t notice…’
‘Girls? Girls! I’m not a girl!! Ewww!’
*Slap, slap, flappity-slap*
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You never asked! And you never told me!’
*slap, slap, paddle, slap*
‘Well, I thought it was obvious!’
*slap, flap, sulk, paddle*
Romance and mating must be tricky within such an androgynous species, but they seem to manage or there’d be hardly any chicks… It does go some way towards explaining why some zoos think they have gay penguins though – they probably just never got far enough to notice, or were a bit stupid, liked each other anyway, and never bothered to find out!
We peer at the two penguins on the grassy dune for a moment, expectantly, but there is no slapping or nuzzling, it’s not the right season. These ones are definitely full-grown, they both have the yellow stripe along the tufts on their ‘ears’, which only appears after 6 months.
Someone murmurs excitedly, and we spot another penguin making its way up the beach. He has flopped out of the ocean onto his tummy and stands up hurriedly, looking all about him. He does a high-speed shamble up the beach and then pauses, like a bad burglar hiding behind a small footstool in the dark. He looks around him again and, this obviously not have been a sufficient view for him, does a nervous 360 pirouette on his little flat feet before running up the rest of the way to the dune as fast as his tiny legs can waddle.
Our guide points out to us another bird, the Variable Oystercatcher, also known as the Beachmaster. This neat little brown and white bird is fearless and irritable, attacking anything that dares to stray too close to its nest, up to and including sea lions apparently, though I can’t imagine that would have much effect on their lumbering existence!
Andrew is talking to Pauo, peering out of the hide intently, and they are quietly discussing lenses, exposures and ISO numbers. They seem to have swapped cameras to compare and are deep in conversation – I think Pauo has been (without much effort to be fair) encouraged into wanting a more expensive piece of kit – the lure of a DSLR is huge; I should know! Though it would take a better camera than I have to do justice to the view out of the hide now.
The sky has cleared and is now pastel blue and pink, bathing the silver beach in a crystal wash of delicate rose from the dying evening sun. We stare out for a while longer but we are unanimously getting chilly and our guide says we need to be back past the great slumbering sea lions before they awaken and decide to ‘play’ with us before we leave…
We wend across the blushing sands under the milky sky and begin our climb back up the dunes. It is a long way up but the views over the scarcely-believable hills are worth stopping for, even as the light wanes. There is a faint sunset, which washes the vast rolling hills with gold and turns every feature into a silhouette.
Our guide is clearly off duty now – he has shown his eager charges birds and beasts galore, some of the most impressive birds and beasts in either hemisphere, and is now relaxing. He herds us vaguely in the right direction (not that we could really take the wrong route on this spit of land anyway!) and bounds off over the crest of a hill at a tangent, to emerge triumphantly, hair even more awry, holding a small white blob aloft. I soon realise that he has found a mushroom, an enormous, fragrant, white mushroom. I can imagine the soup just looking at it, and there are more! The whole hillside is sporadically dotted with little clusters of suede-like white-capped tasties. I lag behind and help him spot them. He rejects a few on the grounds that they have already been nibbled by something, gleefully expounding upon them and explaining that most of them weren’t here yesterday when he looked… He is absolutely certain that these are mushrooms, not toadstools, showing us the lack of frill beneath the cap, and various other features unique to mushrooms. I wouldn’t trust my own identification skills sufficiently to eat my finds, but he clearly does, and he arrives back at the minibus clutching two large handfuls of plate-sized mushrooms… His colleague looks at him benevolently but long-sufferingly, eyeing his fungal finds suspiciously. There is a brief moment of maternal quizzing, which he reassures nonchalantly, and then we are off!
I am sitting next to Pauo again and we chat happily during the trip back. He is an intelligent, personable and interesting young man and our conversation ranges through many topics: birds, geography, anthropology, photography, New Zealand, the British Isles. He is going to head to university when he has finished his gap year here and I am sure he will do very well.
It is getting dark now, but there is still the odd yelp of excitement as the driver spots something small leaping into the bushes, or finds a pothole. All too soon we have finished our trip, but the driver and his companion have been fun, informative and interesting, and have shown us a little world of magic, right here. It is a shame we have missed the opportunity to have dinner at the Castle, but dinner is available anywhere, sea lions aren’t, and we can always eat at the castle refectory at lunchtime before we leave… Still, it is a shame.
Dinner in a castle…
Would have been nice.
Hmm…
We head back past the castle to the lodge. The castle is floodlit gold, reflecting regally in the pond before it, which is still now, the bobbing ducks having left for the night to roost. It is a warm and balmy night (to us anyway, coming from a bitter English winter) and we hunker down to take photographs of this impressive building from every angle. I can hear a very strange noise as we straighten up to leave, a noisy creaking coming from behind a hedge. I can’t see anything and wonder whatever can it be that is making such a racket? It dawns on me that it is nothing more or less than a frog – just a frog, creaking his tune out to the world in a damp corner, singing his heart out for anyone who cares to listen. We stand and enjoy his solo for a moment, and then head back to our room, the ‘Sea’ room.
It is so-called because it has two windows on two different walls, making it light and airy with a fabulous, wild, leafy and wet view on both sides. We hadn’t really inspected it before, being in rather a hurry, but it’s well worth inspecting.
It is a warm, clear night.
We stand on the balcony which stretches around two sides of our room, at tree level, and stare out over a still, silent, twinkling bay. The sky is clear and we can see the stars, Orion and the dusting of smaller stars around him particularly. You don’t see this shimmering veil of other stars at home, it is too bright from all the streetlights, so this seems most unusual and I drink it in, safe in Andrew’s warm hug. We look out over the bay and beyond, staring upward into the scintillating skies, looking beyond the main constellations, and we see above us, laid out before us in its full glory, the creamy, twinkling cloud of a swirling galaxy, the Milky Way…
We have eventually had our fill of the station and head back to our little Hyundai, which is still waiting patiently, with its fairy, for our return. As Andrew familiarises himself with the controls (we anticipate the wipers being particularly necessary soon!) I see a man pass intently past the car. He is small and reminds me a little of my late maternal grandfather; intent, a little wobbly but very smartly dressed with tie and pullover. But the thing that strikes me most about this chap (which may have sparked the resemblance!) is not what he is wearing, but what he is carrying.
It’s a book.
Not just any book.
A large book.
No, not a large book.
A gargantuan and antique book, filled with the weight of words it carries, leather bound and possibly once even gold embossed. I would be unable to lift such a tome (easily two feet long), yet he has it caught easily under one arm, this bookworm, in the same way that a hunter might carry home a huge prize, or an ant a sweet and tasty morsel larger than its own body. I want to run after him, to ask what it is that he carries, what ledger of souls it is that has been entrusted to him, but he is there only briefly, walking speedily, and disappears through a small door marked with official lettering where I cannot follow…
As we have a schedule to keep, we depart fairly swiftly from Dunedin town centre now (though intently admiring the architecture along the way). This is exciting. We are not actually staying in Dunedin, but in a little village near Larnach Castle, from whence we shall sally for to find the Royal Albatross! Andrew hasn’t told me where we’re staying, but I suspect a quaint bed and breakfast nestling feudally somewhere near the castle. We shall see. In the meantime I stare out of the window as we wiggle around the peninsula. It is very pretty – rugged and wild, grey and damp, and ultimately gorgeous. There are shags and gulls aplenty, some perching all over a little boat house, which immediately becomes known at the ‘shag hut’. They funny-looking things, cormorants, all eyes, wings and oddly-angled neck until you realise that these are vital tools of their trade, spotting a fish, then angling themselves into a fatal arrow to slice neatly and silently into the grey water and pluck out a glistening fish.
We wind onwards along the coastline on this little spit of land and come to signs for Larnach. I keep my finger on the map and watch where we are going. This lovely area only just feels colonised; it is still largely wild and the landscape seems to buck like a reluctant and part-trained horse under the weight of the crops. We turn off up to Larnach and the road is tiny and empty, winding up through the hills. We seem to have run out of village and I am a little puzzled by the lack of feudal-looking bed and breakfasts now…
Then I realise as we round the corner and see the sign in front of us.
We’re not staying in a B and B.
We’re staying at the Castle!
Wheeeee!
:D
I bounce.
The Castle is down a long driveway and we are greeted by Peter, the gatekeeper, in his little hut by the gate. We feel special as we are allowed in after hours as it were, when all the tourists have gone. We drive up the long, lush, verdant driveway and admire the tall trees in the murky weather and briefly see the very Scottishness of it all. We pass the castle itself, an imposing building, ginger-coloured against the grey sky, clearly built in the style favoured by the English manorial lords just after castles had become statements of grandeur rather than fortified dwellings. We head onward for the Lodge, where we are sleeping for the night. We are met, after a short wait, by a tall, slim gentleman who points out the breakfast room in the Stable across the way and shows us to our room. It’s gorgeous, the Sea Room, looking out with two windows and a balcony over the wild, free, grey waters surrounding the peninsula. Trees rustle and drip beneath the balcony and the ubiquitous and familiar grey mountains loom amiably in the distance over the waters. We quickly drop our belongings, trying to be tidy as the room is so lovely, and scramble together bird-hunting gear. We’re off to find seals and albatross! We walk back down the path again to the front gate, where we will be picked up by the minibus. On the way we see the Castle again, marvelling at its grandeur. It screams 19th century Gothic revival with every pore and demands photographs… I silently promise them for later… The whole thing is very Scottish, even down to the light drizzle. We are high on a hill here; the area around Larnach apparently even has its own microclimate, almost as if Someone intended it to be a little patch of Scotland plopped in the middle of the Antipodes. It is no wonder the original Scots settled here in preference to the rest of NZ!
We walk past the viewpoint, a little railed patio, and marvel at the silvery clouds drifting by in the grey beneath. We wander further up and spot a Fly Agaric by the road, just sitting there, bold as brass, under a tree on the verge. It’s massive, bigger than a dinner plate and considerably more toxic. We photograph it (and the two babies nestling beneath it like little fairy stools!) profusely and spot a few more further down, so we bounce off to point our shutters at those too… A young woman with a wheelbarrow passes us. She has dark green ear defenders carelessly looped over one ear and onto her shoulder and she looks up from her barrow and smiles, inquiring what we have found. I tell her we have found toadstools and she is instantly intent and eager, curious about the little monsters we are inspecting. It turns out she is an under-gardener here, an apprentice, and she is learning a lot about plants, but has not learnt about toadstools yet; I tell her everything I know about Fly Agarics (which to be fair, isn’t a lot!) and she drinks it in avidly. She is clearly in the right job!
She leaves us to it as she ambles on with her barrow and we finish photographing and walk briskly down to the front gate. A sea fog is rolling in, silvering the late summer ferns with droplets and making everything pleasantly lush and damp. We arrive at the front gate a little while later and we check with the gatekeeper that we haven’t missed our bus. He hasn’t seen it, so we wander around in the light drizzle and admire the grounds. We soon spot our apprentice gardener again; she is deadheading a large plant near the front gate which has finished flowering for the year. She seems quite happy at this thankless task but greets our appearance with renewed enthusiasm. She’s a very sweet and friendly lass and we chat about gardening and pets and travelling. It turns out that she was born and raised in the area around Larnach and loves living here. She has lots of animals, which she goes home to visit at lunchtimes and is awe-struck when we tell her where we are from. She is happy here, but clearly has a yearning to travel. Her eyes grow wide as we talk of England and London and she absorbs all I can tell her about Singapore and Australia with youthful enthusiasm. We are almost sad to leave this charming little person when our bus arrives but she cheerfully waves us off and hopes we have fun before turning happily back to her plant.The bus driver and his colleague are both very friendly and excited about the trip. This is infectious and passes on to us. He is a natural, slightly scruffy, very earthy blond chap with a winning smile and a fun, familiar style. She is an elegant, rugged lady with interesting features an almost disconcertingly wide smile and a short crop. She curls herself around her seat and gives us a running commentary about what we are seeing, with him interjecting happily and cheekily from the driver’s seat.
We learn that the peninsula was volcanic. This is unusual – the north island is almost exclusively volcanic, but the south island is largely glacial. We pass Harbour Cove Hill, which I believe is the one we can see from our room. It looms in the distance over the grey waters. A little further on we are shown a peaceful little spot, which is the way to a Buddhist shrine/sturpa.
As we approach our destination, we are told about the problems created when the Europeans first arrived. We cut down the trees for farming purposes etc, and this has created problems for both penguins and their predators, the sea lions. Penguins can be quite shy creatures and need a certain level of ground cover to be comfortable and sometimes even to moult or mate. Sea lions have issues with this lack of cover too – when the mothers want to leave their pups in safety while they hunt, there is no longer anywhere for them to stay, leaving them vulnerable. Just another sad reflection of how badly we have affected the environment around us.
Still, as environments go, this one is still pretty unspoilt. We drive on, through the oddly enticing grey mizzle and peer out of the windows at the glorious countryside. Our guides provide us with binoculars and a running commentary on the creatures we see around us. We make several unscheduled and excited stops in the middle of roads, with our lady guide talking animatedly at us and our chirpy driver saying that he was sure it wasn’t safe to stop quite in this spot on the road and could we move on a bit now please?
The lady responds that this is the only place that we can stop and look or we’ll miss them, can’t he see that Royal Spoonbill, just over there, next to the wader- and there’s another one, right near it…
With a lot of this random halting, excited pointing and much peering through binoculars we see black waders, grey herons, shags, back swans and, of course, the two gorgeous Royal Spoonbills, neat in grey, white and black, with their massive, bulbous beaks sweeping carefully and deliberately through the swirling grey water for food.
Fortunately for these birds, the land here is all Maori.
When white people first came to these shores, there was harmony. Fifty years prior to the arrival of the first white settlers, the land had been adopted by the likes of sealers and whalers, and there was much for them to hunt. These first men here were often accepted into the local communities, they lived with them, were friends with them, became part of the local way of life. Some even married local Maori girls and had little half-caste children. This had become a happy norm. Then the white settlers came, arriving in droves, and the land-grabbing began. No more living harmony with nature and the locals, this was all about colonialist annexation. And, sadly, there was very little the sealers and whalers could do for their new friends. However, this particular tract of land has been given back to the Maori community and is largely a safe haven for birds and twitchers, among other strange beasts.
Not that the sealers and whalers didn’t bring their own problems. They hunted Right Whales, which are the most commonly caught, for their blubber and baleen, and ambergris when they found it. Right whales are fat, slow and float close to the surface, making them an easy target. This species fuelled many, many city lights and their baleen made ladies’ tiny waists even smaller... Baleen was, for many years, the principal ingredient of corsetry. That so noble a beast should die for a woman’s wasp waist!
We arrive at the Albatross Centre and wander out towards the cliff edge with our blonde gentleman guide. He is a lively chap, friendly, keen, fun and terminally scruffy, as if he has been surfing and his hair and attitude have set that way, despite the chill in the air.
We look out over the empty, grey sea, peering through the low clouds and see gulls wheel by and the odd shag flap past on the prowl for some dinner. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but it is interesting all the same for there are plenty of other beasties in the sea below us too: seals, sea lions, cormorants and gulls. Our guide tells us about the lifestyle of the enormous birds we had hoped to see. They rarely have more than one chick, and this chick becomes enormous on the rich diet it is fed. Albatrosses feed their young regurgitated fish, like most seabirds, but when the egg hatches, and for a while after that, both parents will produce a rich milky substance from their crop to feed the baby. This makes it fat. Sometimes other babies will try to muscle in on the feeding if they are left at home alone too long (the albatross parents can both be away for a period of weeks, which is why the babies are so fat, to cope with the lean times), and sometimes they too will be fed in the confusion, but are then mercilessly attacked and battered to teach them a lesson!
We decide to head back for the coach and make our way to our next destination when there is a yell from our lady guide further along the cliff:
“Albatross!”
“Where??”
We crane to see, peering all around us in the thinning mist.
“There!” cries our gentleman, pointing out to sea. I struggle to see in the grainy bright light, fumbling for my binoculars about my neck. A small shape floats by in the distance, a long haul flier trying to come home, just waiting for the right thermals to gain enough altitude to soar over the cliff. Albatrosses never flap. They cannot gain altitude by flapping. If they flap, they just go a bit faster, never any higher. Because of this, they often wheel around, judging the cliff’s height, then heading out to sea again to find a thermal, before wheeling back in to try the cliff again, time after time. But their long wings are what enable them to stay aloft for weeks on end, sometimes travelling thousands of miles before coming home again. They are a true wanderer, rarely touching down except to breed.
Our albatross is clearly on the altitude-gathering part of his circle. He heads inwards, flying closer as we watch. At one point he disappears behind a headland, to our disappointment. But he is soon spotted again,
“There it is!”
Below us, standing agog on the cliff, he glides, soaring effortlessly on our level, close enough to see every detail of this unique seabird. He passes below us, black beady eye watching the waves behind his pale pink beak. They are neat, stocky birds, massive and elegant, and glorious in flight.
This close you wonder how the Ancient Mariner ever managed to walk with one of these massive creatures tied about his neck.
This close you can see how it was believed that they were souls in flight.
This close you can get a fantastic photograph!
I am privileged to have seen this creature, and from what our guide says, he will be back.
We watch, scanning the grey horizon with eager eyes for his return and are rewarded by another one too! Two parents are coming home with food for their chicks! We watch as the two of them take turns circling up, each time slightly higher, but never quite making it, wheeling away at the last moment and skimming just too low along the cliff edge before us. Eventually one of them has gained enough altitude that she disappears triumphantly behind the lighthouse on the horizon and is gone. Her mate, for so we assume, is not far behind, disappearing from view shortly after. We wait for a while on the cliff, but the chill creeps in and we head for the Albatross Centre itself for a hot drink and some food.
Hot chocolate and nice quiche later, we head back out for the minibus. Suddenly ther is another yell and I nearly drop my chocolate,
“Albatross! Overhead!!”
I just manage to wedge my chocolate between some stones by my feet and look up to see as enormous, pointed-winged shape sweep slowly and majestically over head. I gaze at it, not taking my eyes from it as I fumble for my camera. It is not the only one, to my surprise. We are treated to an epic fly-past from these sea-bound juggernauts, three of them, flying near to each other, passing us in quick succession. It is common for teenage albatrosses to group together and fly around in bachelor groups.
And we have just seen one.
Bonus!
Next stop sea mammals…
On our way to the next point, which will be a colony of fur seals we pass through various interesting creatures’ homes. We see Paradise Shelducks off to the left; the male has a dark head and the female white. They mate for life. We see a kingfisher too, a little bright dart, and a field full of Pukeka, those funny little New Zealand birds that look like a parrot crossed with a chicken; they have long legs, more like a small wader than a chicken, but eat their food held in their claws, like a parrot. They are friendly, common little things and they have communal nests, so they all share the risks and care of the babies.
While we travel, I chat to the chap next to me. He is a young Dutch chap called Pauo and is interesting, bright and intelligent. He has a large SLR and I envisage a long discussion between him and Andrew as he waxes lyrical about lenses… He is currently on a trip with an organisation whose acronym is WWOOF, which I think stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms – I gather you get food, lodging and pocket money in return for farm labour… Which in NZ would be rather fun! He is clearly enjoying it here; the atmosphere and surroundings certainly seem to be suiting him. He has picked up some local culture too, having been here a few months, and as we discuss life, the universe and everything, he tells me a local legend about sandflies…
The glorious Sounds were made by one of the Maori demigods as a place of beauty and rest. The underworld gods saw it and thought it was beautiful too. They created sandflies to teem across the Sounds in droves so that humankind would not linger in this heavenly place too long, but leave and remember their own mortality.
We break off our conversation to whip out our binoculars as we round a corner along the coast. There are, in this sheltered bay, two more Royal Spoonbills and two dainty, neat oystercatchers. We also see a harrier high overhead, nearly lost in the thick fog slightly inland.
Convolvulus clings to a slope like pagan white decorations in a wedding veil of fog.
Suddenly, amongst the peace of the coastal fog, there is a flock of sheep!
A sea of wool surges in front of the bus, blocking our way entirely. We stare out at the damp landscape as we wait for the tide to pass. They part, like some mythical sea, and we are on our way again. We pass some wind-blasted trees which have grown crabbed and crippled in the teeth of the harsh weather and all bend, twisted, gnarled and crooked, away from the sea
We arrive at a gravelly car park and the sky is clearing a little, though it is still mainly grey. A bunny near the horizon lopes off at high speed towards a sheep which eyes it disdainfully, both in silhouette. Our guide takes us onward on foot. There are two of us who are not too keen on hills, and he inquires after us most solicitously, making sure we can manage it. He hangs back with me as we head down a grassy bank, concerned that I wince every time I step on my knee… But I came to see fur seals and I am blinking well not going to let an errant collection of gristle and tendons stop me!
A distant, shallow beach hoves into view through the murk and I give my knees a severe telling-off and follow the rest of the group down a staircase cut into the coastal soil.
My knees are forgotten as I stare out over the selection of rockpools which comprise the fur seal colony. The seals have clearly made this their home, and chosen well. There are small ledges to snooze on, big rocks to bask on, little pools to practice in and bigger pools in which to ride the swells for fun. There are few adults around at the moment, being that it is daytime and they have gone out to fish, but the babies more than make up for it; they are delightful. Of varying ages, they are scattered around the rocks in little clusters, some snoozing like little fat, velvet balloons, others playing in the rock pools, bobbing about and snapping at each other playfully. One little one, clearly still very young, is on his own in a pool, bobbing about with what appears to be a feather. His mate comes along and they wrangle for a moment over who has the glory of carrying the feather and the original owner wins, wrapping the feather around his nose in his triumph and then shaking it away, ducking and weaving beneath it and coming up underneath to grab it in his mouth once again. I watch him frolic for a good while and then cast my eye over the rest of them, some babies and asleep, others almost ready to go into the real sea. Apparently fur seals aren’t born innately ready to swim, they learn this from their parents and other adults, so this little collection are sensible to keep themselves out of the way of the worst of the sea and weather. Another little one catches my eye, right beneath us, and so close we can see his little beady brown eyes looking at us curiously. He is sucking his flipper when I first see him, but then turns his nose towards us to get a better look, forgetting his flipper in his curiosity.
Eventually, we have had enough of the seals, though they are delightful ad I could have observed them for hours… We head back up the steps, my knee complaining less on the way up than on the way down, but I still find myself at the back with the other lady who dislikes hills again!
There is a bit more of a walk before we arrive at another downward slope. I eye it with some trepidation as the beach we area aiming for looks rather a long way away. Still, if there are sea lions it will be worth it; there may even be penguins! We wander down towards the sizeable dunes through an area which has been set aside for penguins. IT is being replanted, and there are large spiny and ferny plants to provide shelter under which nests can be built and the moulting penguins hide. They get very miserable and grumpy at this time of year, and who can blame them? It must be rather like having measles and awful PMT at the same time… For two weeks, the penguin just sits… Sits and thinks while his feathers fall out all around him, leaving him looking rather as though he has lost a pillow fight and his conqueror left him sitting sadly in the midst of his own shredded pillow. Sometimes they shuffle a few feet, leaving little sad puddles of feathers behind but more often than not they’ll just sit tight for the duration, sometimes losing up to 6kg… For an 8kg bird that’s quite a lot! The one we have spotted looks mournful and dejected, unsurprisingly, and looks away from us at the sea, sadly. If they were to try and swim like this, they would be submerged and chilled in moments, imagine going swimming without a wetsuit in the cold and wintry ocean. Brrr! There are two more getting ready to moult as we wander down the grassy dunes, sitting sadly under bushes and on grassy patches. One of them hunches off grumpily underneath a fence (through a gap built for the purpose!), looking for all the world like an ancient grandfather trying to pre-empt a visit from the relatives and sneak away to the nice peaceful study to escape the attentions of his daughter-in-law…
Eventually, we arrive on the beach. It is fine silvery sand dotted with crumbs of seaweed and large rocks.
Rocks?
Hang on…
Sea lions!
They are, to our delight, here. Our guide, however, stops us in our tracks and we listen attentively. Sea lions, on the whole, are placid, peaceable creatures where Man is concerned, choosing to ignore us and snooze on in peace. However, our guide also tells us that these slumbering giants are bad tempered, extremely fast if roused and their bite is as toxic as a komodo dragon’s owing to all the collected bacteria within. He advises, no, he orders us to stay together, as stragglers could be at risk, and tells us that, should anything happen, we are to run and he will stay behind to distract them… After all, he says, he signed up for that possibility, we didn’t! A noble, if hopefully unnecessary sentiment.
The sea lions seem sleepy enough as we approach them quietly, sighing luxuriously and turning over occasionally. I have never seen any other animal sleep quite so well or so infectiously; I find myself wanting to yawn and snooze too! There are three of them here, sleeping all jumbled up, head on tail and nose under flipper, the picture of a happy family snoozing on the beach. One is larger than the other two and I assume that he is the male.
However, there are only twenty females (yes, 20) left in New Zealand and they are currently spoken for. So one of the natural habits of the sealions is more prevalent. Generally a young but nearly fully-grown male will collect a ‘harem’ of a few younger males and treat them as girls. He snoozes with them, practices with them and protects them, so as long as the youngsters don’t mind (and ours here seem perfectly content), they get rather a good deal out of the whole thing, having a protector as they transit through the awkward and vulnerable teenage months.
One of the young ones turns over, waving his great flipper in the air and burying his velvet head into his companion’s back. His companion wakes briefly, and makes as if to turn over, but the effort it just too great and he flumps back onto his side again, flailing his flipper about in the air too. A gargantuan snore emanates from their lord and master, and they snooze on, all lumped together like a bunch of humungous, fat, smelly velveteen teddy bears.
We tiptoe on past these slumbering giants as they nuzzle and wave their flippers languorously in the air and make our way down the silvery beach to a little hut at the end. It is a protected viewing area for seeing penguins; hopefully they will grace us with their presence today! Apparently, and we can see from certain marks, the enclosure around this hide has been attacked by sea lions once or twice… Fences and netting are nothing to beats such as these, so we still keep half an eye open towards the beach, where they will slumber until dusk.
But now, we are watching eagerly for penguins…
I have my binoculars at the ready, just in case, and stare out at the pink and grey waves.
The sky is clearing slightly, and will soon be freshly-washed and clear, a fine sky under which to look at things.
Eventually, a penguin emerges.
He is cautious and careful, flipping himself out of the ocean quietly, it seems, and tiptoeing up the beach in short bursts, checking all around him as he does so. Penguins are a number one treat for sea lions, who are an easy match for penguins in terms of speed and are far larger. I begin to feel rather sorry for this little ocean wanderer as he creeps quietly up the beach to relative safety away from the exposed sand.
Soon, though he is joined by another, equally cautious, who does his best to sneak out of the waves on his little flat feet, but is foiled by a flock of noisy seagulls who take off around him, leaving him exposed and paranoid. He takes a while to toddle up the beach, waddling slowly and carefully, hopping daintily over a rivulet. He is clearly too hot at the moment, as he stands, with little hot pink feet (used by the penguins as cooling membrane), and wings outstretched to cool down, before joining his friend on the green.
Penguins are discreet little creatures when it comes to romance. They get to know each other, swap pebbles and peer at each other, that sort of thing, then begin to bond, nuzzling and grooming each other, and nibbling affectionately under one another’s chins. However, it is, apparently, rather difficult to tell the sexes apart, even for the penguins themselves. It is not uncommon for two penguins to be at the bonding stage of courtship before one of them realises his (or her) mistake and then a frantic slapping match ensues! One can almost imagine the conversastion,
‘Mmm… you have nice feathers…’
‘You too, and is that Eau de Poisson I can smell?’
‘Ooh, you are clever, most girls don’t notice…’
‘Girls? Girls! I’m not a girl!! Ewww!’
*Slap, slap, flappity-slap*
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You never asked! And you never told me!’
*slap, slap, paddle, slap*
‘Well, I thought it was obvious!’
*slap, flap, sulk, paddle*
Romance and mating must be tricky within such an androgynous species, but they seem to manage or there’d be hardly any chicks… It does go some way towards explaining why some zoos think they have gay penguins though – they probably just never got far enough to notice, or were a bit stupid, liked each other anyway, and never bothered to find out!
We peer at the two penguins on the grassy dune for a moment, expectantly, but there is no slapping or nuzzling, it’s not the right season. These ones are definitely full-grown, they both have the yellow stripe along the tufts on their ‘ears’, which only appears after 6 months.
Someone murmurs excitedly, and we spot another penguin making its way up the beach. He has flopped out of the ocean onto his tummy and stands up hurriedly, looking all about him. He does a high-speed shamble up the beach and then pauses, like a bad burglar hiding behind a small footstool in the dark. He looks around him again and, this obviously not have been a sufficient view for him, does a nervous 360 pirouette on his little flat feet before running up the rest of the way to the dune as fast as his tiny legs can waddle.
Our guide points out to us another bird, the Variable Oystercatcher, also known as the Beachmaster. This neat little brown and white bird is fearless and irritable, attacking anything that dares to stray too close to its nest, up to and including sea lions apparently, though I can’t imagine that would have much effect on their lumbering existence!
Andrew is talking to Pauo, peering out of the hide intently, and they are quietly discussing lenses, exposures and ISO numbers. They seem to have swapped cameras to compare and are deep in conversation – I think Pauo has been (without much effort to be fair) encouraged into wanting a more expensive piece of kit – the lure of a DSLR is huge; I should know! Though it would take a better camera than I have to do justice to the view out of the hide now.
The sky has cleared and is now pastel blue and pink, bathing the silver beach in a crystal wash of delicate rose from the dying evening sun. We stare out for a while longer but we are unanimously getting chilly and our guide says we need to be back past the great slumbering sea lions before they awaken and decide to ‘play’ with us before we leave…
We wend across the blushing sands under the milky sky and begin our climb back up the dunes. It is a long way up but the views over the scarcely-believable hills are worth stopping for, even as the light wanes. There is a faint sunset, which washes the vast rolling hills with gold and turns every feature into a silhouette.
Our guide is clearly off duty now – he has shown his eager charges birds and beasts galore, some of the most impressive birds and beasts in either hemisphere, and is now relaxing. He herds us vaguely in the right direction (not that we could really take the wrong route on this spit of land anyway!) and bounds off over the crest of a hill at a tangent, to emerge triumphantly, hair even more awry, holding a small white blob aloft. I soon realise that he has found a mushroom, an enormous, fragrant, white mushroom. I can imagine the soup just looking at it, and there are more! The whole hillside is sporadically dotted with little clusters of suede-like white-capped tasties. I lag behind and help him spot them. He rejects a few on the grounds that they have already been nibbled by something, gleefully expounding upon them and explaining that most of them weren’t here yesterday when he looked… He is absolutely certain that these are mushrooms, not toadstools, showing us the lack of frill beneath the cap, and various other features unique to mushrooms. I wouldn’t trust my own identification skills sufficiently to eat my finds, but he clearly does, and he arrives back at the minibus clutching two large handfuls of plate-sized mushrooms… His colleague looks at him benevolently but long-sufferingly, eyeing his fungal finds suspiciously. There is a brief moment of maternal quizzing, which he reassures nonchalantly, and then we are off!
I am sitting next to Pauo again and we chat happily during the trip back. He is an intelligent, personable and interesting young man and our conversation ranges through many topics: birds, geography, anthropology, photography, New Zealand, the British Isles. He is going to head to university when he has finished his gap year here and I am sure he will do very well.
It is getting dark now, but there is still the odd yelp of excitement as the driver spots something small leaping into the bushes, or finds a pothole. All too soon we have finished our trip, but the driver and his companion have been fun, informative and interesting, and have shown us a little world of magic, right here. It is a shame we have missed the opportunity to have dinner at the Castle, but dinner is available anywhere, sea lions aren’t, and we can always eat at the castle refectory at lunchtime before we leave… Still, it is a shame.
Dinner in a castle…
Would have been nice.
Hmm…
We head back past the castle to the lodge. The castle is floodlit gold, reflecting regally in the pond before it, which is still now, the bobbing ducks having left for the night to roost. It is a warm and balmy night (to us anyway, coming from a bitter English winter) and we hunker down to take photographs of this impressive building from every angle. I can hear a very strange noise as we straighten up to leave, a noisy creaking coming from behind a hedge. I can’t see anything and wonder whatever can it be that is making such a racket? It dawns on me that it is nothing more or less than a frog – just a frog, creaking his tune out to the world in a damp corner, singing his heart out for anyone who cares to listen. We stand and enjoy his solo for a moment, and then head back to our room, the ‘Sea’ room.
It is so-called because it has two windows on two different walls, making it light and airy with a fabulous, wild, leafy and wet view on both sides. We hadn’t really inspected it before, being in rather a hurry, but it’s well worth inspecting.
It is a warm, clear night.
We stand on the balcony which stretches around two sides of our room, at tree level, and stare out over a still, silent, twinkling bay. The sky is clear and we can see the stars, Orion and the dusting of smaller stars around him particularly. You don’t see this shimmering veil of other stars at home, it is too bright from all the streetlights, so this seems most unusual and I drink it in, safe in Andrew’s warm hug. We look out over the bay and beyond, staring upward into the scintillating skies, looking beyond the main constellations, and we see above us, laid out before us in its full glory, the creamy, twinkling cloud of a swirling galaxy, the Milky Way…
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