The Catlins Forest Park & Dunedin

The Catlins Forest Park

After faffing about in Invercargill for much longer than planned I eventually set off for the Catlins at about midday on Sunday and made my way along the highway, fairly uncertain of where I was actually going. You see, planning in advance hasn't been my greatest strength on this trip as I'm always either doing and seeing stuff, driving here and there or resting and sleeping. Well, a quick look at my Lonely Planet guide (whilst driving), followed by a look at the map (whilst driving), pointed me in the direction of two places - Slope Point and Curio Bay.

Slope Point is marked as the most southernly point on the south island of New Zealand - Stewart Island holds claim to the country's most southernly point - despite the intriguing shape of the map that suggests it isn't. It was a fairly long and very boggy walk through a sheep grazing field to get to it, and the little landmark lighthouse (and tacky signpost pointing to the Equator and South Pole) adds nicely to the remote feel of the place. Experience rating = adequate. Near to Slope Point is a lighthouse at Waipapa Point, built 3 years too late after New Zealand's second worst maritime disaster, the sinking of the SS Tararua in which 131 people died. Well, I was in the area so it would be rude not to have a look. But when I got there I was distracted by what I could see on the beach - closer inspection revealed three whacking great big Hooker's Sea Lions basking in the sun on the sandy beach. Jackpot!

These things are seriously impressive, no wonder they're called lions - big and intimidating with savage looking teeth. I'd read somewhere that you should keep your distance and never block their path to the sea, and standing in view of them I decided that was sage advice. I subsequently read on a sign that you should stay at least 30 metres away at all times - I was a lot closer than that but at least I tried to be careful. I moved round this way and that to get different angles of them on my camera, and then when I finally realised that they weren't about to move or do anything exciting I decided enough was enough and moved on to my next target - Curio Bay.

Curio Bay plays host to something very different - a 160 million year old fossil forest next to the sea that's only visible during low tide - and seemed well worth a visit. Some very clever people have worked out that the fossils of the logs, trees and plants date back to a time when most of the world, including New Zealand, was part of one big super continent called Gondwanaland. Amazing stuff, but as cool as that sounds it didn't really do it for me as an experience; I generally had no idea what I was standing on or looking at apart from a couple of obvious trees, the rest could have been a big pile of rocks for all I knew. I decided to take my leave, but then something unexpected happened. Again. I looked up to the top of the beach and there, staring back at me, was a penguin. And not just any penguin, as if that wouldn't be exciting enough - I could clearly make out a distinct, bright yellow band around its eyes and head. This, ladies and gentlemen, was a yellow-eyed penguin, the rarest and shyest penguin in the whole world, staring at me in the wild on a 160 million year old fossil forest with no-one else around. It's not every day that happens to you is it?

Apparently these penguins, of which just 3,000 exist, will do one of three things when faced with a perceived threat - run away or freeze on the spot. This one was obviously doing the latter so I grabbed my camera from my pocket, zoomed in as far as it would go (not very) and took a picture. I had a quick look and the picture looked okay on the screen, not blurred but pretty distant (it looks further away than it actually was), but when I looked up again I experienced the former too - it had scarpered. I've no idea where it went, presumably into the bushes at the top of the beach, but after a quick scout I decided I should leave it alone as these creatures can get very disturbed just from a long distance sighting of a living thing, let alone some nosey foreign tourist stumbling into its home.

Well, what a day it had been, I felt great and extremely smug - some great spots, lovely winter weather and then a free night's accomodation at the campsite as the office was closed when I got there. Honesty Boxes? Not in my dictionary I'm afraid. In the morning my luck didn't extend to seeing a rare Hector's Dolphin in nearby Porpoise Bay as they're only there in the summer, which is a shame; looks like dolphins will have to wait until Kaikoura. I also didn't get any luck at Cannibal Bay (no doubt named after Maoris) where I greedily went to see more sea lions, but my spirits were still high when I arrived a Nugget Point, home to all sorts of things.

At the end of Nugget Point sits a lighthouse and from there you can look down at the little nugget rocks on which many different animals live - fur seals, elephant seals and sea lions all co-exist here which is very rare; yellow-eyed and blue penguins, gannets and shags all breed there too, although I didn't see any of the aforementioned from my perch way up. Right, time to knuckle down and head off to Roaring Bay, a place dedicated to seeing wild yellow-eyed penguins.

I wanted more, more damn it, of these amazing little creatures than that one brief encounter and so I sat myself down in the lookout den - provided in an attempt to keep people hidden from the penguins so they'll actually stay in the area - and waited. And waited. I arrived at 3pm and after over an hour of excruciating boredom they began to arrive. They'd been out 'fishing' in the sea all day and seeing one finally arrive was a fantastic experience. A small black bird bodysurfing the waves straight into the centre of the beach; a bit of a delay and then up steps a beautiful little penguin. A quick shake of the body, legs and fins - and sometimes a repeat after being nailed by another wave - and then they make the long waddle up the sand to their little homes in the bushes of the hill.

I saw six in total, and they all walked back in pairs. The first one to arrive actually stood near the top of the beach waiting for the second one to arrive, and then after some comical hopping up some rocky steps they disappeared into the bush. When the next two arrived one went in the bush and the other waited outside, and a penguin log-jam began at the bush entrance. At this point I decided I'd probably seen enough - well not really but it was very cold and I'd been there for 2 hours - and so I went and stayed the night at Kaka Point, ready to move on to Dunedin the next day.

Dunedin

Much like Wellington, I really liked Dunedin due to its pleasing look and feel, laid back atmosphere and the compactness of its city centre. And there's lots to do here as well, which makes a change from most New Zealand cities - I ended up spending three nights there before heading up to Christchurch. But that's partly due to the fact that when I first arrived there in the afternoon I had a banging headache and felt terrible, totally exhausted, and ended up in a campsite having a nap. Well, that nap turned into a fairly solid sleep and I ended up very, very refreshed the next day and ready to have a really good explore.

Dunedin is gaelic for Edinburgh, so I couldn't resist checking out Lanarch Castle which was a pet hobby for one William Lanarch, a man of Scottish descent who spent most of his life in the British colonies of Australia and New Zealand in the late 19th century. He made his money through banking during the gold rush and, after checking out the views of Dunedin from the Otago Peninsula nearby, decided he wanted to live on the peninsula and build a castle to match his uncle's on the other side of the world. And so began a lavish and unnecessary project to build a castle, complete with a gun room and battlements at the top, in a quiet area of New Zealand in the peaceful year of 1871. Brilliant, I love it.

The castle was bought by the Barker family in 1967 for a low price - it was very run down by all accounts - and they set about restoring it whilst using it as their home (they're self made, they weren't rich when they bought it). And what a job they did, the gardens are spectacular and the inside is pretty much back to its original splendour. Marble sculptors from Italy, wood carvers from all over Europe and local Kauri tree carvers were all brought in by Lanarch to form the original interior, and most of it has been bought or loaned back. It really is a fascinating place, all done by a bank manager in an attempt to woo his wife-to-be and her family. Out of all the little facts about the place, I bring you this - all the family's and horse's excrement was piled up in a building at the back and converted into methane, which was then pumped through to the castle to light all the crystal chandeliers. Ingenious stuff, but I wonder what the castle smelled like inside?

In the city centre itself I went to the free art gallery, had a look at Cadbury World but didn't pay for the tour as it seems like a rip-off, and also took a look at Baldwin Street which is, according to the Guiness Book of Records, the steepest street in the world. I didn't walk up it, in fact the thought never even crossed my mind. Apparently the annual Gutbuster race sees the winner run up and down it in about 2 minutes - that's absolutely staggering, not because of the time but because there's actually people willing to do it.

Last on my list, but by no means least, was a trip to the very end of the Otago Peninsula to see a wildlife king - the Royal Albatross. Before I talk about that, allow me to point out that there are only 150 of these birds in New Zealand, it's the wrong time of the year to see them and also the wind needs to be very strong to actually see one of them in flight. So, my hopes weren't especially high, but I paid the 25 bucks for the tour anyway. Standing a metre tall with a wingspan of over 3 metres, these birds are the largest (but not heaviest) flighted birds in the animal kingdom. They can live their entire life at sea and only need land to lay their eggs, and as they're so large you tend to find their colonies on small oceanic islands such as the Falklands. And so it came to everyone's surpise when, in 1920, one of these birds flew to the Otago Peninsula and laid an egg at Tairoa Head, formerly home to a Maori village, and in the process created New Zealand's first Royal Albatross colony (and still the only accessible one on the planet). And it still baffles scientists today.

I find that fascinating - why on earth would it leave its colony and fly god knows how many miles to lay its egg somewhere completely new? Presumably its old home had been affected in some way but how would it know to come here? And that the land it chose was exposed to the 'Roaring Forties', a channel of high wind between 40 and 50 degrees south in latitude? Remarkable, they blatantly have some kind of inner GPS that we don't have. Speaking of GPS, all the albatrosses at the colony are tagged and monitored wherever they go. One was recently tracked all the way on an incredible journey to...Chile, over 6,000 miles away with nothing but water inbetween. And they've no idea why it went there. I never expected these birds to be so interesting - other facts include their triple-jointed wings (for easier folding up), their ability to dislocate their jaws like a snake and also their amazing weight - chicks weight more than adults and can reach the heady heights of almost 10 kilos, which is very heavy for a bird.

Most of the tour was spent at the top of the hill in the lookout room where they provide binoculars for everyone and also have live TV screens with those self-controlled cameras that are great fun to use. In view were two chicks that every now and again would flap their wings in an attempt to take off - as it happened, the wind was very strong that day. Once again my camera was utterly useless on the zoom front but fortunately some American guy had brought his own telescope and tripod and I didn't need a second invitation to take some pictures through it (it worked surprisingly well). He was hilarious, really getting into it and at one point I thought he was going to have an orgasm - 'Oh yeah...oh my god...oh, that's amazing' in a slow, whispered voice. I think he enjoyed the experience.

I enjoyed it too, another new thing ticked off the list (I don't actually have a list by the way) and some good luck in actually seeing the birds - an adult flew/glided into view at one point. My wildlife experience has certainly been much better than my weather experience here. Well, I'm pretty much done here but before I get to Christchurch I have to spruce up the van and give it back to Jucy. No rest for the wicked...