Our last stop, Sydney and the Blue Mountains

The iconic Harbor Bridge

  

After a long days travel from Cairns to Sydney, we made it to our apartment in Elizabeth Bay, a few clicks east of the central business district (CBD). Venturing out for dinner that night, we discovered what an exclusive area we now found ourselves in for the next week, evidenced by the small, chic restaurants and boutiques. Like shops that sell only French shoes, beautiful design shops, that kind of thing. Luckily there was also a great Thai restaurant, our favorite, and with the land still moving we settled into a good nights rest on terra firma.

Kookaburra doing a good job ignoring me.

Seems like Sydney is all about the harbor so we wanted to stay near the water. We found this great apartment on AirBnB with a water view but no heat and windows that sort of leaked. No problem, it’s bright and sunny out so off we went. It was Jeff’s birthday the first day there so we spent the day walking around and seeing some of the great iconic sights of Sydney: The Opera House, Harbor Bridge and the Royal Botanical Garden (RBG). The garden was one we passed through many times during our stay since it lay between our house and the CBD. It was Friday and at our birthday lunch at Café Sydney, we discovered how Australian business culture might truly differ from American (at least Seattle-side biz folk). First off, we noticed lots of suits and formal biz attire, something rarely seen anymore as corporate casual has taken hold. Second, the amount of alcohol quaffed during lunch: cocktails, then a bottle of white, then red. Our waiter informed us “We get a lot of corporates on Friday, they knock off early afternoon and start their weekend”. He coined a new word for us: “corporates”.

It looked like the weather was going to get rainy about mid-week during our visit so we opted to get out to the beaches while the weather was good. First we visited famous Bondi Beach and did the coastal beach walk to Coogee. Lovely. Next day Manly, which meant we could travel the length of the Harbor from the CBD to the mouth where Manly lay on the north side by ferry. It was Sunday and the ferry was packed with all types of people from families to visitors like us from all over the world. We took in the beach scene there, decidedly different than Bondi and hiked up in the national park around the harbor mouth. Both were great days filled with lots of beautiful Sydney Harbor scenery.

Manley Beach surf scene

And then the weather did change, something we underestimated it at first and went out anyway. Gusts up to 65 mph and inches of rain fell. We came home that night soaked and wind blown. Turns out it was the biggest storm of the century (OK, that’s only 15 years!), one that brewed up in the Tasman Sea and created the perfect storm. Hundreds of thousands were without power, people had died in flash floods: it was serious. The front moved slowly across Sydney for three days total. The good news was that we needed to turn some attention to the details of arriving home, the bad news was the lack of heat and leaky windows in our apartment! On our last night we met friends of our friend, Ellen for dinner in the CBD, Cathy and Shaun. The wind had died down but it was still raining. We arrived looking like drowned rats after walking up on the Harbor Bridge and had a lovely dinner with these two wonderful people. We missed you Ellen!

During dinner Cathy  asked me if Australia had lived up to my expectations. I found that I didn’t know how to answer this question. We saw so little of Australia really, only the coast of Queensland and now this part of New South Wales. It’s an epic country with a fascinating history and a culture that seems very much like America but is, of course, very different. The hospitality of the people we met has exceeded my expectations and some of the scenery as well. It’s always the people who make a place special. I hope we get the chance to come back and unpack this place a little more.

Not everyone gets to this extreme weather view from the Harbor Bridge...

The weather finally cleared the morning we left. Our wet and cold apartment had lost it’s charm by  then and we were ready to pack up and head out of the city.

Curious lorikeets on our windowsill, seeing how we fared the storm.

Our next stop was Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, just two hours west from Sydney. We couldn’t have picked a better place for our last stop on this trip. Blackheath is a small town that reminds me of our home on Vashon. Talking to folks here I detect a sense of community here. And some awesome hiking a short distance from our house. Beautiful scenery, crisp mountain air and some sunshine. And then hail. We were surprised one day but a freak hailstorm that managed to dump half inch sized hail everywhere. We stood out in the street and talked to our neighbors who said it was a very unusual occurrence. It melted after a few hours and convinced us that they do big weather here in Australia.

As I write this final travel post, the sun is out and it’s a brilliant blue day. I wish I could go for a last hike or maybe get in the car and drive west until we hit the desert. But there’s a plane to catch in Sydney. The year of travel has finally come to an end and we return home to pick up where we left off. I am grateful for all the experiences and blessed to be able to take this year. Reflection is in order so one more post will follow. Thanks for reading!

Bondi to Coogee coastal walk, great Pacific views and amazing geology

The Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains, more spectacular geology!

Clouds rolling in behind the landmark Opera house

Coral Sea Safari

Osprey Reef along the outer Great Barrier Reef from the upper deck of Spoilsport

Around day five on our Coral Sea Safari that I noted a strange phenomena: Each time I closed my eyes, an underwater video passed before in front of them. Nothing specific, just lots of fish, swaying soft corals and general underwater coral reef movement. I guess that is the cumulative result of spending 4-5 hours a day underwater.

What a world it is underwater, teaming with life. Impossible to describe in words so I will rely on my fellow divers photos and videos to help tell the story. And despite the rumor that the GBR is dying it was thrilling to dive the outer waters. We did see some coral bleaching due to climate change and lots of broken coral damage from the recent cyclone but on the whole, it's still a phenomenal experience to dive what's considered the largest living organism on earth.

Mike Ball's Spoilsport was the perfect way to see it. Amazing crew and guests, both from all around the world living together for the week. Heaps of fun, laughs and of course, diving. The first night we sailed from Cairns was raining and blowing sideways across the dive deck. Luckily that was the only rain to speak of, some wind and confused seas but we were pretty far off shore in the middle of the Coral Sea so it's to be expected. The boat is stable and takes rough water well. And we were lucky enough to have the charming and mischievous Mike Ball himself with us for the week. Howard Womersly, the staff videographer brilliantly captured much of the trip underwater created this 90 second video created for the first 4 days of our weeklong trip. Mario Hermann also provided the photos below, all of which link to his blog.

Can you hear the Jaws theme starting? (Mario Herrmann)

One of the diving highlights was the shark attraction dive out on Osprey reef. This sounds so much scarier than it really is... it's a regular occurrence, same location, where the staff attach huge tuna heads to a chain in a large metal can that is covered with a lid. There's an underwater pulley system that allows them to get it down to a spot on the reef called the amphitheater. The sharks seem to know what's coming and start arriving when they see a boat on the mooring. They are mostly white and black tips along with some grey reef, no real aggressive species. Hammerheads can be seen off in the distance but they don't come in for the actual feed. The divers are all arranged in a semi circle about 20 feet from the bin against dead coral, Roman theater style. The sharks come very close as they circle the closed tin in front of us all and then carefully remove with a long pole and the sharks go into their feeding frenzy. Very awesome to see and a good reminder of how just very wild these creatures are! Our dive buddy Neha Singh caught this two minute video. It was Neha's first trip with her GoPro and she did a great job. The end is my favorite part!

Soft corals & fish at the top of the reef

Large predators are awesome, but to me, the best parts of the diving were all the colorful, odd-shaped fish that we just don't have in the cold northern Pacific and all their interesting behaviors. I loved the shallower parts of the dives where the water was gin clear, the diversity of corals were amazing and tons of little fish flitted about. The challenge is to focus on one thing while there is so much activity going on, that's the only way you can manage to catch a glimpse of some reclusive creature. For example, we were doing our safety stop at the top of a bommie and I happened to see a peacock

mantis shrimp come out one whole of his lair and dash into another one of it's entrances. A quick flash that all took place right underneath another diver. Such a beautiful animal and I'd never seen a whole one before! Just the right look at the right time is all you can hope for! (Check out that link for a 3 minute video by smithsonian and see what jailbreakers the mantis shrimp!)

Another amazing creature we saw out on Osprey Reef was a nautilus. These deepsea molluscs live at

Nautilus captured (Mario Hermann) 

100-300 meters and are trapped and brought up to a depth of 40 feet so that divers can look at them. The nautilus has the extremely rare ability to withstand being brought to the surface from its deep natural habitat without suffering any apparent damage from the experience. There is a research element also as they are then measured, photographed and then sent back to depth and released. Chicken has been found to be the best bait. How this ancient mollusc developed a taste for yardbird is beyond me but apparently it works. When our crew brought up the trap there were three in it. These animals are the smallest of the species and captivating to look at. and I promise, no nautilus were hurt in the taking of this photo.

We stepped off the boat in Cairns early in the morning and flew to Sydney. The land was still rocking for at least a day. The underwater video has stopped but the memories of that week on the Great Barrier Reef live on.

Australian cuddlefish (huge!) with Woody in the background (Mario Hermann) 

Potato cod poses for the paparazzi! (Mario Hermann)

Yellow boxfish - such a face!

our motley crew (photo from mikeball.com)

Of course, the real Nemo! 

a page from my dive log...

Far North Queensland

Beautiful and wild Wonga Beach

As we drove north out of Cairns, we could tell that we had entered a very new world. It's a jungle up here. The scenic drive along the coast to Port Douglas was beautiful. The lush mountains down to the ocean are reminiscent of Kauai or the Big Island of Hawaii, just a lot more of it! We were headed to our home for the next week in Wonga Beach, a very small beach community nestled within the Daintree National Park.

Daintree is a rainforest area that's apparently getting larger as the Park acquires more land. Signs warn you that Wonga Beach is the last petrol stop before Cape Tribulation. You have to cross the Daintree River on a wee ferry to drive the 35 miles up to Cape Tribulation and that's where the sealed road ends. From there its mostly impassible during the "wet" season unless you have a proper vehicle. This is the Cape York peninsula, that pointy part of Australia that aims towards Indonesia. It's wild up here, Daintree is the attraction for visitors but only if you aren't into the rainforest, you stay south in the resort areas of Port Douglas, Palm Cove and the like.
 

Blue dragon nudibranch (wikipedia)

Our home this week is the Reef Cottage. Wonga Beach has a gas station and a pharmacy. Apparently the tavern shut it's doors a few years ago. I think there might be 200 houses here, and what's remarkable to me is the beach front. There is absolutely no development along the beach. The houses stand a good 100 yards from the actual beach with pretty dense forest in between. This gives the beach a wild, South Pacific feel and it goes on for 10 miles up to the mouth of the Daintree River. Not only is it beautiful but it makes a good buffer for cyclone protection. Cyclone Nathan came through here just three weeks earlier. Why haven't we learned that in states like Florida which get hit by hurricanes? Again, rhetorical question.

Daintree is a hotspot for biodiversity, tones of everything here including a few things that will seriously harm or kill you. Crocodiles being the most obvious. The beach is off limits for swimming because of stingers (box jellies and blue bottles) some of which will merely hurt you and one species apparently will kill you quickly. As I was looking up stingers online, I found this amazing pelagic (open water) nudibranch called a blue dragon that feeds on stingers. It is beautiful. Of course there's a YouTube video of one "dancing" (more likely this is how it gets around).

Beach stone curlew

But it's mainly tons of harmless life: incredible birds, butterflies, insects, and reptiles (despite Bill Bryson's exaggerations in The Sunburned Country). In the Daintree there are no native placental mammals, just those monotremes (e.g., playtpus) and marsupials like possums and the tree kangaroo. There is one very interesting endangered bird called the beach stone curlew that seems to thrive right here in Wonga Beach. I have seen a few on the beach and they have this very twitchy way of walking that probably has something to do with food. But they come up onto the streets at night and look for food. It's funny to see them out under that streetlights in the subdivision walking like drunken sailors. September and October are the months to be here for birds, many pass through here or breed here then. My favorites are the kookaburros for their bad-ass look and incredibly ape like call. Gives the place a real jungle feel while they converse between each other.

Shrubfowl nest - at least 15 rt hy 4 ft!

Lots of interesting stuff right outside our door. Behind our house is a heap of leaves and compost. Looks like someones leaf mulch pile but turns out it belongs to a pair of nesting orange-footed shrubfowl.  Instead of roosting on eggs they let the heat from decaying organic matter do the job for them. They will lay up to 15 eggs under these piles and the hatchling will kick it's way out of the shell, dig it's way to the surface (may take two days) and then fly out of harms way, independent from the get-go. Fascinating. Another interesting bird in the hood is the bee-eater, beautiful little bird that eats insects out of the air but burrows in the ground to lay eggs.

I spent a day in the rainforest with Pete Baxendell and learned heaps about how the place ticks. Pete told me lots of stories about how the aboriginal people used different plants for both practical and medicinal purposes. And, amazingly, we were able to watch a cassowary and two chicks briefly as they crossed the road in front of us as we headed north to Cape Tribulation. Whooooooaaaaaa, were we lucky!

Now we are off to Cairns to join the Spoilsport for a week of diving on the outer parts of theGreat Barrier Reef. No internet so it'll be a good break from electrons.

Souther cassowary and two chicks, a rare site as only 48-52 live up in this area!

Wonga Beach sunrise

The Great Barrier Reef

Flying into Lady Elliot Island

When I was 15 and attending Seacamp, we had a visiting science speaker from Australia who gave a talk on the Great Barrier Reef. Ever since then I have longed to see it. Forty years later, I finally made the trip. What the heck took me so long? Rhetorical question, of course!

For our first experience diving on the reef we visited Lady Elliot Island, a small island 80 km off the Queensland coast. It's the very southern part of the reef and the closest to Brisbane. Accessible only by plane, it feels like an adventure just getting out there. The short runway pretty much bisects the island which makes for fast take offs and landings.

Noddie and fledgling

The first thing you notice when you get off the plane are the white-capped noddies. They are everywhere... on the ground, in the trees, and on the buildings, I expected to see them underwater! Their name comes from the nodding behavior that they do in the breeding season. These seabirds use this tiny speck of an island for nesting (hard to nest at sea). They also have a lot to say about that nesting, the sound of their activities permeates the island, increasing during the evening as the birds return from fishing at sea. We watched streams of them coming in during the sunset and dusk. They are accompanied by mutton birds who are stopping over on their way south. Mutton birds make an amazing migration from Tasmania to Japan and Alaska and then returning, some 15,000 km. Their night sounds were first described to us as babies crying. So between the noddies and the mutton birds, it's a very dominate evening sound track, particularly in the evening. We found that they usually settled down for an hour between 3-4 am.  But after that first day of diving, we didn't hardly notice them and slept like babies.

Teaming with life

Mother nature did not disappoint: the diving around Lady Elliot was fantastic. The island is surrounded by coral bommies on the west side and has a wall on the more exposed east side. And very easy access, every site is within 5-10 minute boat ride. We were lucky to have a few calm days at the beginning that allowed us to get around to the east side wall. Every dive consisted of lush corals, tons of tiny fish, loads of big stuff like sharks, rays, groupers (as big as me!) and too many turtles to count. The days were spent diving in the AM and then trying to ID all the many things we saw and then repeating the process in the afternoon. Needless to say, our week flew by.

As always, it's the people who make a place really special. The dive staff, Nikki, Alesh, Ryan along with their great boat drivers, Phil, Simmo (number 10!) and others made our diving easy, safe and filled with great sitings. They know these reefs so well and where critters can usually be found. Wonderful guests as well, we had the pleasure of diving with the hilarious duo, Donna and Fiona, lifelong friends from Adelaide and then Phil and Amy Townsing and with their kids, Brook, Sam and Brendon. All great divers. Their friends Diana and Westy from Melbourne rounded out a great crew. Luckily for us, Phil and Westy had GoPro cameras and shared some great video footage.

Heaps of big fish, photo courtesy of Westy,

and heaps of wee fish

The giant mantas of Lady Elliot are really the star of the show. When one of these amazing and large rays (wingspan 6-8 feet!) came into our diving vicinity, we would all go to the bottom and wait. These beautiful creatures would eventually swim up to the bommie (coral head) and pick up some cleaning fish, then keep circling it as fish dropped off in order to pick up more. They would soar over us in the process, so graceful and etherial. Phil Townsing captured a beautiful video (below) and I have trimmed it down to fit on this blog. Be sure and use the full screen mode. (this may not appear in IOS devices like iphone and ipad, sorry!)

How about that? A video shows a thousand words. Thank you Phil.

Now we are in up north of Cairns in the wet tropical north Queensland. It feels very lush and remote up here. After this week on land, we will join the Spoilsport in Cairns for another week diving on the outer parts of the Great Barrier Reef!

The Sometime Coast

The coastal path to Kings Beach

We traveled north of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. I am calling it the Sometime Coast because sometime we'll have to come back and have more of a look about. Coming here was part of a home exchange with Jerry and Cathy McBrien, who stayed at our family's house in Lake Tahoe during their "Ski Around the World trip" (I love this: three months on the same ski pass to resorts in Colorado, Lake Tahoe, France, Switzerland and Japan!). This exchange gave us two weeks in Pelican Waters, in their lovely, new, and very comfortable home. We were lucky enough to be met by Lyn and Jeff Freebody who live across the street and who gave us a great intro to the local beaches, shopping and the coastal trail. They have been our constant source of local knowledge, beer, laughs, and all around assistance. And just his morning, Jeff delivered our dive gear which we weren't sure was ever going to make it through customs, quarantine, DHL, and the robots. Long story but Jeff and Lyn are our heros.

Rainbow lorikeets boozing it up

When we first landed here Jeff said "We went to sleep in Brisbane and woke up in Florida". He was right, this area closely resembles where I grew up on the west coast of Florida with lots of water, development, retirees, and holiday rentals. As we got to know the place, the differences became more apparent. There is the vast open ocean and accompanying surf; the nearby mountains and hinterlands; the amazing birdlife; marsupials (kangaroos, wallabies and koalas which we have seen nearby out in the bush), and the charming Aussie accent. OK, so not so much like Florida when we got to know it more.

The vegetation leans towards more tropical species but two ubiquitous trees there remind me of Florida: Australian pines and Melaleuca trees (paper bark). Those are two trees introduced to Florida for various reasons and have become invasive species there. This is their natural habitat and you see swaths of them. One difference here with the Australian pines is that they feed several incredible birds including the glossy black cockatoo, corellas and the riotous rainbow lorikeet. We've seen flocks of them in the coastal trees. Apparently they get a little sauced on the sugars in the cones causing them to squawk up a storm and sometimes fall from the trees. The other tree, Melaleuca were planted in Florida to drain low lying areas and spread to cause many problems. Here's they are quite lovely and produce tea tree oil. But I digress...

Paper bark tree forest

With two weeks in one place, you think we would have gotten out and explored all the area has to offer: the nearby Glass House Mountains, numerous small hinterland towns, Steve Irwin's Australian Zoo, the Big Pineapple and so much more. While we did get out in the mountains a bit and got to explore Noosa, we've seen very little. And that's OK. There are four simple reasons for this:

1. The house is too comfortable. It has central air, a great kitchen and lots of room. It's hot here and, like Florida in the summer, inside is the place to be after, say 10 AM until the late afternoon. 
2. We have both have had colds. It was bound to happen sometime over this year and it's really good that it happened here where we can recuperate and before we start the Great Barrier Reef portion of our trip. 
3. It is so nice to cook our own food. We'll be on Lady Elliot Island eating their food for a week and then on a liveaboard dive boat for another week soon after that. So for now, we cook our own food and enjoy what we like to eat. 
4. It's a very relaxed vibe on the Sunshine Coast. We've enjoyed just riding bikes along the coastal trail (see above), watching the surfers and swimming. Inside the shark net* and flags, of course. It's serious ocean out here folks. 

The concept of  Shark nets are a new for me. Apparently they sprung up along the Queensland Coast in the early '60's as an attempt to control the incidents of shark/human interactions that may actually bring more sharks in to feed on things that get caught and die in these huge nets. Baited drumlines were also a part of this scheme. While swimming one day, I heard the lifeguards come over the loudspeaker and announce "there's been a few sharks spotted in the area and we suggest you stay in knee deep water". Of course, no one moved. I decided to use that as my cue to get out. And it made me think about sharks a bit more than I'd like to, especially since our upcoming liveaboard trip includes several shark dives... yikers. I discovered a new favorite website, Shark Tracker. The website tracks shards from around the world that have been tagged with GPS to collect data on their natural history. I've adopted a tiger shark named Maroochy as my totem shark, she lives off Hervey Bay and travels around the lower reef, and out around Lady Elliot Island where we are headed. I hope that I don't see her. 

There, again we are lazy, bad tourists. Or easily entertained. From here we drive north to Hervey Bay to fly out to Lady Elliot Island. Let the diving begin!

The Glass House Mountains

Noosa Head National Park coastal trail

Can you find the rainforest wallaby in this picture? 

Welcome to Oz!

Welcome to Australia! 

Brisbane was our first port of call into Australia. We left the cool temps of Christchurch for 90+ F in tropical Queensland. Unseasonably hot, all the locals say, summer hasn't broken. The thermometer reached 104 F the first day we were here. Movie time, a nice air-conditioned cinema that serves cold beer in walking distance of our house... sign us up! Luckily it cooled off to 90 after that.

Queensland Art Gallery

Brisbane is a lovely city build along the Brisbane River. We stayed in Paddington, an up-and-coming neighborhood just a few miles from the CBD. Getting around was easy since Brisbane has the same bike share program that Paris has (and many other cities). It was an easy ride to the river and then dedicated bike highway along the river. Riding through the Botanical Gardens that grace the CBD along the river, it was easy access to everything we wanted to do. Across the river from the CBD is the South Bank Culture area with the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, both fabulous with good examples of Aboriginal artists, current and historical.

If we didn't feel like riding, our other fun option was the City Cat, a water taxi service that cruised about ten miles from one end of the Brisbane suburbs to the other.

the deadly cassowary 

Our time here was highlighted by visiting with Jane and Bill Hopsick and their wonderful daughters Sophie and Emily. Jane was my sister's housemate in grad school and threw a traditional Aussie barbecue for us with heaps of local delights (lamingtons, lemon-lime bitters, tasmanian cheeses, and of course, vegamite!) along with heaps of meats on the barbie. We also met them for dinner at the historical Breakfast Creek Hotel. Thanks guys, hope we see you in our neck of the woods to return the hospitality!

We also visited the classic Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. This low-key tourist attraction had tons of koalas, kangaroos and wallabies, Tasmanian devils, platypus, wombats, many great birds, crocodiles and, our favorite, the cassowary. We could get so close to this massive bird (a good six feet tall) that it was easy to see the stiletto claw that is reputed to slice open it's prey, or a human that's annoying it, disemboweling it's victim. Yikers. All the pens are very accessible pins where you could get quite close to them. Now we can pass on the Australia Zoo, the late Steve Irwin's major attraction.

Brisbane is a great gateway to Australia. Now we are just north of there in Pelican Waters doing the house exchange. Looks a bit like Florida here until a cockatoo flies over or you hear people talk. I'll post about this place as soon as I get done relaxing in this comfortable home and actually see something besides the coastal bike path and the beach.

City Cat makes getting around Brisbane easy, scenic and fun.

Feeding the roos at Lone Pine. 

Pedestrian bridge connecting the CBD and South Bank Cultural Park

Kookaburra, the largest of the kingfisher family and what a laugh!

Done-in in Dunedin

The beach at St. Clair is popular with many mammals

We pulled into Dunedin on a crystal clear, sunny summer day. After finding our beach house in the St. Clair neighborhood (I know, they misspelled it) we headed to the beach. Surfers out riding the perfect break, outdoor cafes and people enjoying the day. Picture perfect little beach town. Our plans for exploring this far end of the south island from Dundedin kind of faded away when we realized how sweet it was right here in St. Clair. It was obvious that we were going to be very bad tourists this week.

penguin ponderings

The weather didn't hold of course, it's rather dreary here quite often. Although there are some very good museums in Dunedin, we didn't see them. We did walk through the beautiful old campus of the University of Otago and into the Botanical Gardens, a rather remarkable, large, well-curated botanical garden. Other than that we didn't see much more of the town.
Instead we saw penguins! The nearby, beautiful Otago Peninsula has nesting colonies of the little blue penguin (smallest penguin in the world) and beaches where the solitary yellow-eyed penguins nest. Our first attempt was Sandfly Bay. We dutifully followed the Dept of Conservation instructions on how to approach the beach, where to find the hide to watch them and what not to do. We made our way into the hide and proceeded to watch a great deal of human/sea lion interaction as groups of people walked onto the beach to take pictures of the sea lions. No self-respecting penguin would ever come ashore here. Why didn't these people follow penguin protocol? Struck out.
Earlier that day, a local restaurant owner in the nearby town of Portobello told us about Allan's beach where she's seen both little blues and yellow-eyed penguins. We decided to give that a try the next night. We drove out to the car park and found a beautiful, deserted beach. It was looking good. We found the large rock she mentioned and parked ourselves in front of it as we heard the penguins are near-sighted on land and don't see you. Luckily for us and the penguins, a local fellow came a long who told us to move behind the rock, otherwise they won't come ashore. They have very good land eyesight (can't believe everything you read on the web!). He knew their behavior and told us it's a colony of little blues who come up in rafts of 5-6, lift out of the water and congregate on a flat rock at the waters edge. Then one will make a run for it right by the rock we were behind into the cliffs behind us. By now there were six of us behind this very large rock, it was getting dark and we heard them start vocalizing and could make out the first raft waddling up to the first rock. Sure enough, one made a run for it to the left of the rock, passed very close to us and then waited at the base of the cliff. The others followed. Even in the dusk you could make out their little bodies waddling along, it was so fun to watch. And they are amazing cliff climbers as well. We watched a couple of more rafts come in and called it a night when it was just too dark to see anything.

Crested Fiordland penguins recuperating in the hospital

But that wasn't enough of a penguin fix, we needed to see the larger, more solitary yellow-eyed penguin. We elected to visit a private conservation project called Penguin Place. Their work started on their sheep farm in 1985 where they began restoring habitat, trapping predators and building nesting boxes. As they learned to care for sick penguins, a "hospital" developed and people began sending wounded birds there from around the island. At the time of our visit they had 50 penguins in for rehabilitation including two crested Fiordland penguins that live in remote areas of the very south end of the island. They were brought in starving a few weeks ago, have put on wieght and will be released in about a week back in their normal habitat. In small groups, we then went out on the extensive reserve that stretched out along a beautiful beach. The penguins feed all day and come in at night and the yellow-eyes don't come in together like the little blues but individually. We were lucky enough to see two come up out of the water and travel across the beach and up into the habitat to find their young. I managed to catch this video of one of the determined little trucker as he passed by our hide. It's fledgling time for the birds so the young still rely on their parents for bringing food. The nests are pretty informal so we could see a number of young (almost as big as their parents!) among the bush. It was amazing to see the work these people had done to foster the survival of these endangered birds.

click to expand map

So that was it for being tourists. We rested and relaxed in St. Clair, caught up on life at home and a few movies. Another great thing about this neighborhood: best ever outdoor saltwater pool! Built on the cliff, right by the ocean. Spectacular. A nice ending to our time in New Zealand. It's been a great journey.
We've landed in Brisbane and it's going to be around 104 degrees today. We mailed our cool weather clothes home, we won't need much more than shorts, jandals and swimming costumes where we are heading. We will no doubt miss the cool, cloudy skies of Dunedin as we explore tropical Queensland and the great barrier reef until the end of April.

The beach at Penguin Place

St Clair salt water pool

Riding the Rail Trail

Big sky country kiwi style

We left Christchurch and headed west and south towards Queenstown. Everyone told us that we had to go to Queenstown and we are not going to Queenstown as it is overrun with tourists celebrating Chinese New Year. Instead, we opted to ride some of the Otaga Rail Trail instead. This is an old railroad line that was decommissioned in the sixties and made into a 150 km bike trail. Like the Tasman Great Taste Trail, it's one of the Great Cycle Trails. It goes through dry farmland with massive rock formations resembling the American west. The whole trail takes about four days, staying in small accommodations along the way. The good folks at Trails Journey dropped us off at the top of the grade and rode back from there, mostly downhill, but it's not a steep grade. Spectacular day. We also rode the Roxburgh Gorge trail and with more time we would have been able to explore the Clutha River trail. Next time: Alps to Ocean Trail!  And maybe Queenstown after that, at a quieter time.

Wildlife encounter on the trail

Best carrot cake ever along the trail at the Station Cafe in Lauder