Why do birds suddenly appear...

Thursday, 23/08/2012 - 69 A.D.  

This morning was cold, but not the coldest. We allowed ourselves a lie in until 9 a.m. to let the sun get up in the sky…unfortunately we didn’t realise that we were parked in the shade! It was the 69^th day of our grand trip and the only real plan was to head for the city of Invercargill, taking in whatever The Road threw at us along the way. One of the sights the morning brought was the ethereal layer of mist that covered this lake:

After driving back through Te Anau to do a proper refuelling, we headed south and stopped off at a wildlife centre. At first we thought it was all closed up for hibernation, given that none of the enclosure seemed to hold any animals, but after a while a couple of birds emerged slowly from their little bird houses – they were the next biggest up from those wading pukekos we met back in Rotorua. But they didn’t do a great deal, so we didn’t stay long.

While driving south and looking for a suitable spot to park up for lunch, we finally realised what the little ring symbol that we kept seeing on the atlas signified – Lord Of The Rings filming locations. Well, duh! Unfortunately the atlas did not state which bit of the film the sites were used in, and my knowledge of the trilogy is okay, but I haven’t watched it for a while. Anyway, check out this shot from the bridge over an unnamed river flowing into Lake Manapouri:

I think it was used in the scene where the ring wraiths were chasing the elven woman and Frodo and she used her elfy magic and the waters came rushing round the corner and crashed into the wraiths. Tomorrow I’m going to look for the spot where Gandalf stopped at Rohan Morrisons to buy a packet of wizard fags because his pipe got broken by the Balgorg (it’s from a deleted scene on the New Zealand-only DVD). Oh yes, and while I was on the bridge imagining elven women, this little birdy landed with a chirp and got very close to me. Between it and yesterday’s duck, I seem to be developing quite an affinity with our flying friends. Maybe if I put some roadkill on my head then an eagle would land on my shoulder?

Further on down the “southern scenic road” we reached the coast and stopped off at Monkey Island (if you’re reading this, Mr. Stobbs, I didn’t find the secret). However, I did learn that it is very important in Maori folklore because it’s the spot where a deity laid anchor for his ship, and it got its name because it was an early unloading point for the settlement of Orepuki (“Fishy Willy”) and they used a monkey winch to unload the cargo. It’s also accessible at low tide, but alas it was high tide when we arrived and so we could only stare from the shore.

We got to our campsite on the west side of Invercargill early enough for me to have one of my “walks” around the area (i.e. a What Carcass Moment in disguise). Just down the road was a racing circuit, but as usual it was shut up for the off season. On my way back a car pulled up beside me and an old geezer asked me how far I had to go, given that I was walking along a road with no pavement a good few kilometres from the town centre. I told him it was okay and that I was only going round the corner, but what friendly people, eh? If that happened in England the alarm bells would ring and the nutter-o-meter would start up! But in NZ it’s different, and it was pleasant to stroll under the warm late afternoon sun. It felt like a fine Spring day, but the owner of the campsite said that it had been minus six degrees that morning - ouch – welcome to a sub-Antarctic climate! Lucky we have the fan heater at our disposal for when we wake up. However, upon returning to The Chariot, I saw that the other half of Team Grayboy was already due for a wake up…

Friday, 24/08/2012 - 70 A.D. 

It was nowhere near minus six when we woke up in our west Invercargill campsite. We were in New Zealand’s most southern city, which was settled by Scottish immigrants, and we hoped the weather wouldn’t imitate a Gaelic drizzle. The first place we visited was the Above Water Tower, standing 42 metres high and completed in 1889, it is a fine example of Neo-Romanesque architecture. So there.

Nearby was Queens Park, which has all kinds of interesting things in it, such as a Japanese garden, a wildlife park and an aviary. After the disappointment of the almost-empty bird sanctuary yesterday, it was good to actually see a wide variety of our feathered friends today.

[Umm, can’t remember what this one was, but it came out of its hole especially to greet me.]

[A rushed shot of a rainbow lorikeet.]

[A large cockatoo meets a lesser spotted Grayboy.]

And if I thought that Southport should have a similar aviary in one of its parks, my wish was even more bolstered when we walked through the animal park. We saw chickens, sheep, lambs, goats, deer, terrapins, wabbits, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs and all manner of birdies.

[The stag is called Nemo. He saw my short, spiky hair as a challenge and kept moving his antlers towards me to demonstrate that Silvikrin is not necessary in the animal kingdom.]

An aside – I thought that if you put two roosters in the same place then they would fight to the death. Well, there were lots of roosters (of varying breeds) cock-a-doodle-doing across the park at each other, but several of them were in the same enclosure. Perhaps they were brothers? Brothers don’t fight to the death…they just slowly irritate the hell out of each other.

After the wildlife park there was time for us to nip into the Southland Museum and Art Gallery. This was much of the same sort of stuff we’d seen in Wellington, but there was an interesting collection of black and white photos of the early settlers in the area, the people in them all looking very stern, muddy, moustachioed [SIC], Victorian and frigid. Some of the main streets in the smaller towns look pretty much the same today – the buildings still exist, the only difference is that the muddy track between them has been replaced with tarmac. Bet they didn’t charge a tenner a pot hole, Sefton council!

The museum provided me with probably the only photograph I’m going to get of a kiwi…

…what do you mean it’s not live? Get stuffed! (Like the kiwi).

A 20 minute drive south of Invercargill is Bluff, a small industrial village right on the coast. It’s not possible to go any further than Sterling Point, which is where we stopped for lunch and to play on the rocks.

You see the ocean behind us? Keep going in that direction and you reach Antarctica. Well, okay, there’s Stewart Island within eyesight, but go beyond that and you’re heading for the South Pole. Well, okay you may come to one of the outlying sub-Antarctic islands like the Antipodes, it just depends which way you’re looking, but if you avoid those you’ll definitely get to the sixth continent.

[The first lighthouse of the day.]

Because we’d spent some time wandering around the main shopping streets of Invercargill (nothing to write home about, literally in this case), we were a little behind schedule. The plan had been to get as close to Dunedin as we could and camp up for the night, but we had a difficult choice – take the main highways and head inland, or choose the “scenic” route along the coast that would take us close to the most southern point of the island, but could potentially be a longer trip. Given that yesterday’s so-called scenic route had felt like travelling on a highway anyway, but with less traffic, we chose this option again today. And got not very far.

No, no, we didn’t run out of petrol, I just included the above picture for moody effect. One thing we did spot on our journey through the middle of nowhere was a sign selling swedes for the princely sum of four dollars. Further north we’d seen them advertised for as little as a dollar. There was a vague temptation to take a sudden detour across country, buy up a load of cheap swedes and sell them on to the rip-off merchant for two dollars each. Then we came to Nugget Point and I snapped back into reality.

What on Earth is “Nugget Point”, James? Well, I’m glad you asked. The road atlas listed it with four extra words alongside it – penguins, sea lions, fur seals, elephant seals. Would we finally get to see a penguin? Hopes were high as we parked up and read the sign describing the particular breed and behaviours. These were some kind of  yellow penguins (can’t check up because I don’t have internet tonight!) and they can only be found in New Zealand. August is a non-breeding month for them and after 3 p.m. they can be found “socialising”…what, with voulavants, cocktails and Penguin’s Got Talent on the telly??? The sign also said that we should only go in the hide and on no account head down to the beach because these birds spook easily. And here’s the hide:

Now, I know what you’re thinking – “All of that build up and they won’t have seen anything!” Well, you’re almost right, but thanks to the eagle eyes of some other bloke with a big lens who was already in the hide, we managed to see this happy little chappy:

The picture is a still from our video camera because there was no way we’d be able to view him (or her) that close without a powerful zoom. There was another one just out of shot at the edge of the burrow. Our friend with the lens told us there are about 18 mating couples using the beach. Let’s hope they don’t all mate on it at the same time! Either way, they wouldn’t be doing it in August.

The light of the day was fading and we hadn’t seen any seals, though it wasn’t guaranteed that we would. Even so, we jogged further up the hill and over to the other side of the peninsular to look down on Nugget Point proper.

Though it was quite spectacular to be so high up on a dramatic cliff edge, our vantage point meant that any seals were going to be far, far below us and camouflaged amongst the boulders. Nevertheless, after imitating his best elephant seal mating call, Timbo spotted the following fellah lurking down by the “nuggets” (again, the photo is from the video camera’s zoom).

[IMAGE DELAYED UNTIL A LATER DATE DUE TO LACK OF CAMPSITE MEGABYTES!]

So, despite arriving late in the day, we’d seen penguins and seals and witnessed some stunning scenery. Not wanting to drive around in the dark looking for a place to camp, we considered staying where we were in the car park, getting up early enough to avoid any bus loads of Japanese tourists that might turn up…

…but unfortunately the sign clearly said No Overnight Camping. Bummer! Not wanting to risk the wraths of the rangers, we put on our full beam and headed off down The Road to look for yet another outdoor bedroom in which we could lay our heads under the starry New Zealand sky…

Saturday,25/08/2012 - 71 A.D. 

We parked up on a quiet country lane in the middle of isolated agricultural pastures. Once upon a time this would have been big news, but now it’s just the norm. Today’s place for playing was the fair city of Dunedin, which didn’t look so fair under a blanket of grey cloudage. Dunedin is the second largest city on the south island, but it has a compact centre known as The Octagon where all roads converge. Just to the north of The Octagon are the municipal buildings, which are a fine example of Dunedin’s architecture:

Dunedin was originally called New Edinburgh and, like Invercargill from yesterday’s entry, was settled predominantly by Scottish immigrants. The old railway station is famous for its art deco designs.

After the station we headed over to the public art gallery. There wasn’t a great deal here to interest me (religious painting has never been my thing, so a whole floor devoted to it was never going to float my artistic boat), but we had a bit of fun with an installation called The Kinect. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but if you stand on a certain spot for a while this “thing” synchronises with your body mass and you can move yourself around to create various shapes on the screen in front of you. Who cares what passes for art these days if you can have a bit of fun checking it out???

After Dunedin, we headed to the innocently named Shag Point. Given how exposed and windy it was, it’s definitely not the type of place where I would go for a point. However, plenty of fur seals come here to shag breed and we got to see some of them a lot closer up than we did yesterday.

There was also a beach at Copulation Point where the penguins retire to after a hard day’s swim, but unlike yesterday we did not get to see any today. However, I read the notice board and remembered that the breed is yellow-eyed penguins and they are the rarest in the world.

Tonight we are staying in the coastal town of Oamaru, the holiday park winning the award for most innovative design for a dump station.

And we immediately made a couple of friends, which sort-of-not-really made up for not having seen any penguins. 

Come the evening I decided that it was time to shave off my “beard” as the ginger bits were starting to appear and no one needs to see those. Plus I’ve read that if a flight is overbooked and they’re going to bump someone up to first class they’ll pick on those who scrub up the best and look least like Grizzly Adams. And I don’t fancy facing the south east Asian border control looking like this:

I know, it’s not much of an achievement for a week and a bit of growing, but stick a Singapore PD number under the mugshot and the horror would be complete. Tim, for his part, is going to keep his beard. He now looks like this (you may not recognise him without his glasses):

Everyone is quackers here! Seeya next time.