Wonderful Wildlife in the Catlins

Monday 20th December

I had an absolutely terrible night’s sleep last night. After getting off the ferry at Bluff we headed East along the South Coast whilst it was still light. The 21st is the longest day here so it wasn’t dark until after 10pm. I can’t believe that we are going to experience the longest day twice in one year… it’s one of my favourite days – maybe I should look into becoming a Druid or Pagan or something of that ilk…

Anyway, we wanted to follow some of the sights listed in the Catlins Tour, which are basically places of scenic and historic interest along the South Coast, and the first site on the list is a headland that sometimes has sea lions on it but is also sadly famous for a huge maritime disaster for NZ. In 1881 a steamboat heading for Melbourne I think, ran aground on the reef literally just off the shore – about 500m out.but when they hit the reef the boat started to sink and for some reason it says that there were helpless onlookers watching it sink over the course of the day. 131 people died I believe.  I don’t know whether there was a storm and that’s what made it impossible to get assistance but due to this event, an inquest later ruled that more safety provision was required on ships in the form of lifejackets and lighthouses were needed in treacherous waters. I suppose people perhaps couldn’t swim them but it seemed really sad that so many people died so near to land.  What was even sadder was that just down the road was is a field where half of the bodies were buried. The first half were sent off for a post mortem but as more and more bodies were washed ashore it became to costly to transport them. I’ve found some more information on it here.

Anyway – I started off saying I’d had a terrible night’s sleep, and I was going to explain why. So we’d had a lovely walk to the lighthouse and on the beach  last night. Lovely and slightly traumatic. We’d gone down to the beach off the cliffs to see if we could spot any sea lions in the distance. Hon spotted one about 1km away – it looked like a brown seashore slug through the binoculars so we turned our attention to taking some photos of the beach instead. We were both so enthralled in our own little photo projects that it was more luck than judgement that I turned around to see the not-so-slug-like bull sea lion bounding up the beach towards us. It wasn’t sprinting but I would say he was definitely jogging with intent and he was only about 150m away. I didn’t know they could move so fast! I didn’t know I could move so fast either!!! I was half way up the cliff path before I’d finished shouting Jonathan. Survival of the sneakiest I say! We spent another 20 minutes or so watching him from the cliff top as he made his way to the water and made Jaws-like noises as he swam in and around the kelp along the shore.

So we’d had a lovely walk, a close escape and a good laugh about it as we settled down in the van for the night. It was lovely and peaceful when I went to sleep. However, we were woken up a few hours later to the van being shaken quite strongly by the wind. The wind was howling and the rain was coming down heavy too. Well, you know me and my vivid imagination. I was picturing sea lions trying to get into the van and the ghosts of the shipwreck being angry for freedom camping on their cliffs! Even after I finally got back to sleep I was awake at 7am just in case someone came along to tell us off! Jon was less than amused as there were 3 other vans there and no sign of authority!

Getting up early did have one advantage though. It gave me another chance to go over to the top of the cliffs and have another scan for sea lions. This time I saw a smaller female lying just next to the bottom of the path to the beach. I was busy taking photos of here from the cliff when Jon arrived to watch another male run down the beach to greet her. I don’t know whether he was protecting her as he’d seen me taking photos from above but it was a very boisterous and affectionate greeting they gave each other. I like to think he’d been off for a swim in the bay whilst she was just relaxing and enjoying some rays. It’s like that with humans on holiday; the men have to go for a walk to explore or just be doing something, whilst the women will sit there reading and sunbathing all day given the chance!

If you were ever based in the South Island for a long time and were homesick from the UK, I would recommend driving through the Catlin area. There’s a lot of farmland there and it’s a bit like the area around Aberdeen. It would also be good for a flat(ish) bike ride. I stress the ‘ish’ there.

Following our wonderful sea lion encounter, we went on to see some other great things along the Catlins route. We went to another bay to see a petrified forest from the Jurassic period. It was amazing to see the eroded tree stumps and imprints of fallen trees now made of stone. We also had two more fantastic wildlife experiences. First of all we got to watch a wonderful Yellow-eyed Penguin pootling over the rocks for half an hour.

The information boards at the top of the beach said stay 20m away from them and to not get in the way of them and the scrub at the top of the rocks so they could get back to their nests as it’s the breeding period. This one either didn’t have a nest or it was an extremely chilled penguin because it didn’t seem in an hurry to get away from the handful of tourists watching its every move.

The second great bit of wildlife experience in Curio Bay was that on our way out back along the beach we rudely interrupted a nesting Variable Oystercatcher who went ape at Jon and flew at him at head height. If Jon hadn’t backed off in a hurry I think she would have been on him pecking his eyes out!

So with time moving on we decided to get a shift on and head up to Dunedin. There were more caves and waterfalls we could have stopped at on the way but we decided they probably wouldn’t even come close to the waterfalls in Fiordland so we made one final stop at a beautiful scenic point where the bush runs all the way down to a perfect sandy beach before we were on our way.