Wildlife 2 Dunedin

Royal Albatross

Royal Albatross

Penguin burrow

Penguin nests in snady bank across the road

Sleeping fur seal

NZ sea lions on sandy beach

un squashed dead possum

Grandson Eddie sent me an email with my instructions of what I was to look for. To granny, thanks for your email. New Zealand sounds great and i hear that within one day you will head for the Southern islands. Well i wonder that you may see some marine life;i have done reasearch on animals in New Zealand and i think it would be great if you saw a Fin whale. Its about 20 metres long and 80 tons, making it the 2nd biggest animal on earth,and can be seen around the coast of islands. Another way you can tell it apart is that when it breaches (jumps out of the water), it can lift its whole body into the air like a dolphin. I would also reccomend the New Zealand sealion, which you can see easily if you canoe amongst them in beaches.However there is one animal i would reccomend a lot that is quite easy to see if you know where you can find one, and that animal is: a kea. they are a dark greenish colour, live in the mountains and can make a lot of noise and havoc! If you see any, please take some pictures of them if possible. Wishing you a great time in the South islands. From Eddie. I am afraid I havn' t been on the ocean to see whales or canoed among the sealions but I think Dunedin has put me a bit further up the in the wildlife credibility stakes. I declined to pay to look at a few captive penguins but by walking to the northern heads of the large Dunedin harbour I did see some yellow eyed penguins swimming among the seaweed. They are too nifty to get a photograph though. I did better today on the southern Taiaroa heads of the same harbour which is host to the only mainland colony of Albatross. These majestic birds sailed around the sky like huge gliders. While at the heads I almost tripped over a slumbering fur seal which seem to go into a total coma of sleep and are totally camouflaged in the rocks. Tourists were within about 1 metre and it kept sleeping soundly, infact the only way we even knew it was there was when it snored - probably just snorting actually. At that place little blue penguins have their nests and come ashore quite late every night. However when filming one of their burrows I heard the kitten like mewing which told me that there were babies inside and this was right at the side of the visitors car park. Wildlife and tourists really do have to accommodate each other here. Perhaps not such a good coalition is with possums. So far I havnt seen a live one but have come across a good few flat ones on the road. Today however I found one beside the road which had been killed by a glancing blow only, so at least I got a good look at its curling tail and wonderful bushy coat. Oh yes and I DID see sea lions at Oamaru on my way south and they were sleeping on sandy beaches. I wont see Keas until I get to Mount Cook but will keep looking.

It is interesting that although Connie was a keen sailor and spent a lot of time in New Zealand on the water she never mentions sea life or even native animals at all. From her diary her passions seem to have been food and plants in that order!

Kaiteriteri to Dunedin

Lewis Pass

Holiday Park cabin Rakaia

Boulder with cracks filled with crystals

Moeraki Boulders

Olverston House

The title of this blog indicates a journey from the top to almost the bottom of the South Island. Connie traveled to Christchurch by steamer and then on to Dunedin by train so I didn't have many specific places to visit . From Kaiteri I traveled south via Murchison and the Lewis Pass with a lunch stop at Hamner Springs. Weather damp. I decided to by-pass Christchurch because I was invited to take a seminar at Dunedin College of art.

I hadn't intended to drive quite so far but I just didn't find a suitable place to stop. Eventually I found a great cabin at Rakaia Holiday camp south of Ch Ch about 9 hours after I set out. These cabins are very well equiped clean and cheap a real feature of New Zealand. Next day it was an easier drive to Dunedin via the amazing Moeraki Boulders, great mud balls being exposed by the sea from the mudrock cliffs. It was difficult finding a room in Dunedin, apparently this is the main tourist month in the south so I am now trying to book rooms ahead. A piece of advice for travelers if you are coming this way, do pack a wide variety of clothes, it will be hotter than you expect, colder than you expect, wetter or greyer than you expect, and thats probably all in the same day!

Dunedin offered me some more answers on Connie's trail. In Dunedin she stayed at a house called Tulcairn which is now a boarding house at Chalmers School. It seems to have had a good few additions over the years and the surrounding bush has certainly disappeared although the steep roads she records are still as heart-stopping. During my trip I have also been trying to find out more about a painting found in Connie's house. I had identified it as coming from the brush of Dorothy Richmond who we know had stayed at the House at Arisaig and whom Connie had first met when staying and travellng with members of the Richmond family in New Zealand. I had seen a very similar painting at a temporary exhibition at Te Papa Museum on a previous visit to NZ. I hadn't really made the connections then but had noted the work. This visit I hoped to find out more. In Dunedin I decided to visit Olverston House a large Edwardian home with all original contents. Now this whole story is full of co-incidental events to the extent that this one seems almost inevitable. When I had visited Maggie Atkinson in Nelson she had a book about New Zealand' most famous woman artist Frances Hodgkin and in it I found the very painting I was looking for. The book ascribed it to the Theomin gallery in Dunedin, but I could find no record of this gallery. From visiting Olverston I not only found the actual painting hanging on the walls but also discovered that its then owner David Theomin had commissioned the work from Frances when he met her on a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1902. Still be be discovered is when and why Dorothy painted exactly the same orange seller in Tangier because we know that she was not there at the same time. We know from Connie's journals that Dorothy was very friendly with Frances and that they both visited Tangiers although not at the same time Not only that, but at Olverston I found a large etching exactly the same as the one now hanging in the front porch at Arisaig , and orginating from Connie, by Scottish artist James McBeth a really gloomy prognosis called the " The harbour of refuge'. I never liked it but now at least feel I should look after it a bit better, Just how and when did it come to his home in Dunedin? via Dorothy or Frances perhaps or could he have known Connie? Well tomorrow I am off to Te Anau intending to meet up with friends Lindsay and Sarah Maclane from Yorkshire for a lunch at the tourist centre in Gore! The weather forecast is for torrential rain over the whole country.