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Oh! To go to Otago!

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Still Saturday 21 March 2026 – Apart from being in the right place to be collected for our afternoon excursion, we had to get back to the hotel so that I could pick up the Nikon and the Big Lens, for the outing was, if not a walk on the wild side, at least a coach ride on it. Accordingly, Danny, one of our guides from Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours, came along to add us to his small busload of people to be taken out to the Otago Peninsula to see what wildlife possibilities it threw up. (Monarch has been quick off the mark – it has the URL wildlife.co.nz, getting which must have required some nifty keyboard warriorship.) A quick look at the terrain of the area will reveal that the peninsula is part of a largish volcanic caldera with other volcanic bits also part of it,

so any journey on the peninsula was going to be up-and-downy and left-and-right-turny. We had two more punters to pick up at Portobello before we could go in search of non-human quarry. Danny explained that the Portobello name came about because of the Edinburgh link with Dunedin; Edinburgh has a Portobello (something I didn’t know – my geographical knowledge is truly being expanded on this trip) and the settlers on the peninsula decided that Dunedin needed one, too.

On the drive there, we saw some lovely scenery.

or, rather, Jane did. I was on the wrong side of the bus. Danny also pointed out various bits of wildlife that we passed, mainly birds. Again, I was on the wrong side of the bus, but managed to snatch a quick snap of a Caspian Tern,

which is apparently not a common visitor to New Zealand.

Having picked up our two final punters, the tour went to Hoopers Inlet, to find New Zealand sealions. There was a sealion creche

where an on-duty mother sealion kept watch whilst pups played.

A little along the beach, other females took it easy

whilst our group and others took advantage of their proximity to get photos. The normal rule is to keep 20 metres away from sealions, but there’s a fence here which allows people to get close.

It’s worth noting that we were cautioned against getting too close to sealions, particularly the blokes. They can (a) get grumpy, (b) take offense and charge and (c) weigh upwards of 300kg. Very different from the advice we got for the fur seals in the Antarctic; they might essay a charge but vigorous arm waving is enough to dissuade them. As I’ve said before, fur seals aren’t true seals – they’re more like small furry sealions. Sealions and fur seals are what are called “eared seals”, and one can just about make out external ears on each. Sealions, though, are larger, and the males are more aggressive; they prefer sandy beaches whereas fur seals tend to colonise rocky outcrops. And they both have different skeletal structures from the “true seals” (e.g. leopard seals, elephant seals), which have shorter legs and arms and thus much more difficulty moving about on land.  True seals swim with their feet; eared seals with their arms.*  It’s easy to see the arms and legs of a sealion when it’s in motion,

like this mother, who we think was coming over from the sunbathers either to tell its progeny off or to take over babysitting duties.

I looked away from the sealions on occasions (the kids’ play is terribly cute but after a while it gets somewhat predictable) and managed to get a photo of an incoming pied stilt.

After a while, we decamped to another beach, Allan’s Beach, just round the corner, where there were a few more sealions, including a large male. Apparently the older they are, the darker they get, a neat trick that humans have to use chemicals to emulate.

There were other sealions on the beach, but very little of what you might call “activity”,

so we eventually moved on to the next phase of the tour which, for us, was a boat trip. The boat in question was the Monarch (which guesswork makes me think might be the inspiration for the company name).

It was skippered by Buddy, who has taken the beardedness that typically marks out New Zealand boat skippers to a new level.

The objective of the cruise was to go out to view the Otago Albatross Colony out at Harrington Point. This is the colony for which (you’ll remember, of course) the return of the first albatross every year gives rise to joyful pealing of the St. Paul’s bells. Buddy piloted the boat and simultaneously gave a running commentary, demonstrating a good knowledge of what the birds were up to. His delivery was somewhat idiosyncratic, but the content was very interesting.

The headland in question

features a lighthouse, unsurprisingly, I suppose, but you’ve seen lighthouses before so I haven’t included a photo of it. Looking closely at the terrain enables you to see where albatrosses have their nests

which are just mud piles built up year on year and returned to each year by the parent albatrosses, which basically mate for life. It wasn’t nesting season, which is why there were no birds there. Where they were was further across and up on the cliff

where young albatrosses were going through the process of pairing up. There would be displays on the ground so that males and females could suss each other out,

and a lot of “Ho, watch me glide!” as a tactic to impress potential mates.

Northern Royal Albatross

The albatrosses that were landing and taking off and gliding about were Northern Royal Albatrosses. Whilst we were there, we also saw some White Capped Albatrosses, but they were merely interlopers and not part of the colony.

White-capped Albatross

White-capped Albatross

There was a certain amount of non-albatross action on the cliff face; some cormorants of a species whose name I can’t remember, but which Buddy said were quite rare,

and a vast mass of gulls clinging to the rock face

(with some shags among them).

On the rocks below were some fur seals (rocks, you see – told you so) and there was a comedy moment as one young pup decided that he would climb up and play with the gulls.

He really went a long way up

until eventually his mum came along to tell him that it was time to come down for his tea, or some such.

After our short (one-hour) cruise, for the final component of the day’s outing, we went to the opera. For the ghastly shrieking singing art form, I would have been reluctant to join in, but this was The Opera, the Otago Peninsula Eco Restoration Alliance, a private eco-reserve dedicated to conservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and education [their Oxford comma, not mine, I hasten to add], which is an entirely different kettle of fish-eating birds (and other wildlife). Starting in 1985, the property was transformed, by previous land owner Howard McGrouther and conservationist Scott Clarke, from a working farm into a crusading endeavour to save endangered penguins. It’s a good story of a concerted and linked effort to conserve and protect a species of penguin that was in danger of extinction – the yellow-eyed penguin, or hoiho. The reserve allows tourists to view hoiho while out of sight in specially built trenches. There’s also a rehabilitation facility for penguins, a safe place where injured, starving and unwell penguins (principally hoiho, but including other species also) can be treated for their injuries, fed and brought back to health before being released back into the wild. This was our first stop. It was a slightly bizarre experience, because we saw a compound full of basically motionless penguins.

The reason for this is that it was the moulting season for these birds. Unlike many birds which moult small quantities of feather all the time, penguins undergo what is known as a “catastrophic” moult, in other words they exchange their entire set of feathers for a new set all in one go.

Moulting is an energy-consuming (and I think quite uncomfortable) time for penguins, which is why they don’t move around much when it’s happening. Whilst they moult, also, they cannot enter the water since their plumage is temporarily not waterproof, so they can’t swim to feed themselves. Ain’t nature a strange thing? A couple were doing a bit of mutual preening

but otherwise all was still. The main type of penguin was, indeed, the hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin;

but there were others, too: the fjordland penguin

and the erect-crested penguin.

(a subtle difference – the erect-crested penguin’s two crests are nearly parallel rather than in a sharpish V shape).

After the enclosure, we moved out into the open-air part of the reserve,

where nesting boxes have been set up for incoming wild penguins.

They were largely empty, but one had at least one inmate and clear evidence of moulting.

We also saw a couple of fur seals

and, round the corner, some more, including another young’un with climbing ambitions. He’s the small brown maggot in the grass at the top of this picture.

By this stage it was beginning to get dark and cold and the hoped-for emergence of penguins onto the beach hadn’t happened, so we called it a day at that point and began the long and winding road back to Dunedin and our hotel.

This was our last stop in New Zealand, bar the necessary stopover in Christchurch in order to catch our flight home. So the only prospect for the morrow was the drive up to Christchurch. As ever, Jane had made sure that we couldn’t just get in the car and drive the whole way, oh dear me no. There were a couple of Things To See en route, and so I’ll regale you with those details in the next entry, which may well be the last for this trip.

 

*  If you want to be nerdish about fur seals versus true seals, then here’s what ChatGPT has to say in the matter:

All seals belong to the pinnipeds (the fin-footed marine mammals), but they split into two main families:

  • Otariidae – the eared seals, which include fur seals and sea lions
  • Phocidae – the true (earless) seals

Dunedin – Handsome and Arty

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Saturday 21 March 2026 – What’s in a name? Being an ignorant sassenach, I had simply expected that Dunedin in New Zealand simply took its name from a Scottish city of the same name. Alternatively, since I knew that it had been where mainly Scottish settlers had made their base in 1848, I wondered if they thought, “well, we’ve done Edinburgh, so we could all this place DunEdin for short”. Or perhaps, tired from their travels, they thought “this journey ‘as done my ‘ead in; let’s call this place ‘Done ‘ead in'”. Apart from the fact that there is no Dunedin in Scotland, the reality is much more prosaic: “Dunedin” is basically the Gaelic for “Edinburgh”. And the place has something of the grandeur of Edinburgh about it, with some very handsome buildings, not the least of which was the Distinction Hotel where we were staying, once the head Post Office building from 1937.

(It’s actually a square building; excuse the odd perspective one gets from a wide angle lens, here.)

We had an afternoon’s fun outing booked, which left us with time on our hands for the morning in a new and strange city. So we went for a walk. Obviously. On it, we passed several more handsome buildings.

which definitely give the place the sort of gravitas one feels in Edinburgh. I even thought, when I saw this

that it was an echo of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. That one is for Sir Walter Scott; perhaps this one is another of the various ones we’ve seen to Robert Falcon Scott? Alas, no.

Worthy of special mention are the Law Courts

and, of course, the Railway Station,

which is fabulous both outside and in, not the least of the inside attractions being the existence of a very decent restaurant and coffee shop.

The station proper has a wonderful interior

with some lovely stained glass and mosaic tiling.

The Cathedral of St. Paul is an imposing edifice

which has a separate bell tower.

The bell is rung on Sundays and for funerals and also for special occasions; charmingly, these include celebrating the return of the first albatross to the Otago colony each year (more of which later). The interior of the cathedral is quite light

and features some lovely stained glass, some of which is very localised;

I leave you to do a “Where’s Wally?” for the  seagulls, cormorants, fur seals, sealions, penguins, herons and other local wildlife which adorn this window – astonishingly, it appears not to feature a kiwi. There was some very stirring organ music to be heard as we walked around, and, as we left, I noticed that this great welling of sound was being driven by a young talent at the keyboard.

There are other churchy-looking buildings, some of which actually are churches, such as the First Church of Otago

and some of which aren’t any more. This one, for example, is now apartments.

It also sits on something that features a lot in Dunedin – steep streets.

The local brewery, Speights, is also set in the hills just outside the city centre

(I recommend Speight’s Gold Medal Ale, by the way.) Maybe the hilly nature of the terrain was what reminded the original Scottish settlers of Edinburgh. More on steep streets by the by, incidentally.

Regular readers of this blog, of whom there are at least two, will know how keen we are to seek out street art, and Dunedin features a lot of very striking murals and other works. If truth be told, we spent our morning searching out the works of art (Jane had a special map), and seeing the other buildings was almost incidental. This is but a sample of what can be seen around the city.

Dunedin is a very decent city to wander around in and we enjoyed our morning’s rambling and seeking out of the artworks. Our day was not, however, done; we had Something To Do in the afternoon, so had to get back to the hotel in time to be picked up for it. Read All About It in the next entry!

 

 

The Dunedin Line

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Friday 20 March 2026 – Once again, that we were travelling was borne in on us reasonably heavily, as an early alarm was needed to ensure we were up, packed, breakfasted and ready to be collected at 0720 to be taken down the road for an 0800 ferry back to Bluff.  The morning light was, erm, “interesting”,

and didn’t seem to be sending out omens for a good day.  However, it became clear that whatever weather was causing this light was moving away from us, as we had a calm crosing back to Bluff and sunshine for the rest of the day.  Our destination was Dunedin, 228km away, a journey which could be done in under three hours. Of course, Jane had other ideas and had found some diversions along the way, so we drove largely along the coast for about 300 kilometres and spent the whole day on the journey. A large part of the day was spent investigating sights in the Catlins, a very scenic and occasionally rugged bit of south east New Zealand.

We needed to get some fuel for the car, and Jane had noted that there was a fuel station and café at Fortrose, so we stopped at the Fortrose café and restaurant.  The initial indications were not particularly hopeful; these were the fuel pumps.

They strenuously resisted all of our candidate credit cards, so we decided that we could just get a quick coffee and find fuel elsewhere. The café seemed pretty rustic inside, but the coffee was good and the lady serving us, hearing of our lack of refuelling success, offered an arrangement whereby she used her card to cajole petrol out of the pump and we paid her back in the café. Presumably not the first time she has done this for a punter, and excellent service to go with the great coffee (yes, and scones).

Both vehicle and inner persons refuelled, we carried on,

and it was clear that we had re-entered logging country.

The part of the south coast we were driving passed the southernmost point of the South Island, Slope Point, so obviously we had to call in there. It’s a slightly strange location, with very clear indications as to which direction the prevailing wind blows in (though the conditions for us were calm).

The actual southernmost point

is not reachable by car; one has to park up by a rather ritzy visitor info centre

and cutely decorated loo.

Thence it’s about 500 metres, past a nice view or two

to Slope Point itself, where there’s a navigation aid of some sort

presumably to keep ships off the rather prominent rocks there. This is the selfie spot. We don’t do selfies, but we had to acknowledge where we were, so this is our compromise.

We may be at the southernmost point of the South Island, but, at 46° 40′ 40″ it’s not that far south.  By comparison, leafy Surrey in the UK is 51° north of the equator, so we’re closer to the tropics here than we are at home.

Our next stop took us from one curio, the southernmost point, to another – Curio Bay. This is home to a petrified forest, something I’m sure I’ve never seen before, though Jane swears I have. This is what a petrified forest looks like from above.

I’m glad there was an info board to show us the main features, otherwise I might have dismissed this as being rather dull. But the info board allowed me to see that there were some tree trunks lying down

so I hope that helps make sense of the aerial view. Looking closely at these trunks, one can clearly see evidence of a wood grain, which is fascinating within a stone structure like this.

Scouting further, one can find tree stumps;

in fact the whole area is littered with them – they’re the knobbly bits sticking up from the base rock.

The forest is some 180 million years old, give or take a year or two. The now petrified logs and tree stumps, from ancient conifers closely related to modern kauri and Norfolk pine, were buried by ancient volcanic mud flows and gradually replaced by silica to produce the fossils now exposed by the sea. The actual area of this forest stretches all the way back to Slope Point. Known fossil forests of this age are very few throughout the world, and this is one of the most extensive and least disturbed of them. They’ve put up a visitor centre, café and gift shop, mind.

Onwards, then: next stop Niagara Falls.

No, really; the falls are called Niagara Falls, although,

in truth they’re not that impressive. According to an info board, they were given the name by a surveyor with a sense of humour, and good for him, I say. The river there is actually the site of a couple of whitebaiting platforms.

Until researching this phenomenon, I hadn’t realised that “Whitebait” means very different things in different countries. Whitebait in New Zealand means something entirely different from what we’re used to in the UK. In the United Kingdom today, whitebait principally refers to young sprats, most commonly herring. In New Zealand, it means the juveniles of five galaxiid species which live as adults in freshwater rivers and streams. Four of these five species have been classified by the Department of Conservation as endangered, so the fishing of them is carefully controlled.

I was amused to notice, as we left the Falls, that precautions had been taken to remind any visiting Americans, who might have been taken in by the name, to take care as they drove on.

From Niagara Falls, we went to Koropuku Falls. We weren’t sure what to expect, but set off on the forest track that would lead us to them.

The track, rather nicely laid using lengths of tree fern trunks to make it passable even though it was very damp, eventually led to

an end point where there were no waterfalls, so it was a pleasant enough bush walk, but nothing that would have pulse of an Icelander racing. In researching the falls for this post, I found an entry in atlasobscura.com which rhapsodises thus:

“The Catlins region has a bounty of breathtaking waterfalls, the best is arguably Koropuku Falls— a majestic waterfall with an enchanting bush walk.”

Hmmmm…not our experience.

If you read to the end of the post, it finishes by saying

“Like most smaller waterfalls, the density of the drop depends on recent rain activity.” Other sites also are breathless in their adoration: “a true hidden gem“, “a captivating waterfall” and so forth. So our timing was a bit off, I suppose.  Visit only after rainfall if you want to see the falls as pictured on these sites.

We had hoped to visit the Cathedral Caves on our drive today, but time was not on our side. The caves can only be accessed at lowish tide, and that was earlier in the day – we knew this because its website gives clear times for access each day. We also wondered how the access would be managed, given that tide times change each and every day, and were rather impressed to see that it is managed handraulically.

We moved on, therefore, towards the next Thing To See, through countryside which showed less and less evidence of logging activity.

We had a brief stop-off at a heritage railway tunnel, the world’s southernmost railway tunnel, which was an amusing diversion, but, frankly, photographically somewhat challenging. Photo Nerdery alert: the phone does a better job than the Nikon of giving an impression of the tunnel

Phone
Nikon

Using someone else’s phone as a torch helps

One can clearly see the construction of the tunnel, which was dug in the 1890s using only picks and shovels – that must have been back-breaking labour! – and built with stone and hand-made local bricks.

The penultimate stop on this very peripatetic route was at Nugget Point. It’s named after the Nugget Rocks, and there’s a lighthouse there to keep ships away from them.

It’s a windy road to get there

and a somewhat up-and-down walk from the car park to reach the Point itself.

The Nugget Rocks make an impressive sight

and I was struck by the rock mid-right in the photo above, which appears to have a hole in it.  And indeed it does – waves wash up and travel right through it.

One wonders how on earth that happened.

Our final stop was at Sod Cottage, near Clutha.

This is a heavily-restored heritage site. Originally built in 1862, it was used as a dwelling, store and bar, servicing the travellers making their way to central Otago, probably seeking to mine gold there. It was later used as a school room. It fell into disrepair and was saved from total ruin, starting in 1970, and restored to what we can see today. The walls are two feet (60cm) thick and made of moistened clay. The interior is not accessible, but one can squeeze in through the (unlocked) front door and peek in through the mesh guarding the interior, which is dressed in period furniture and accoutrements.

So it was 6pm when we arrived in Dunedin, having been on the road since 9am – an absorbing nine hours spent viewing a wide variety of different sights and crossing the Catlins.

We had just the one day in Dunedin and we used it well; much to tell in the next post!