What with many other people on holiday in New Zealand, we not only felt we should have a chance to explore too, but we also had no schools available to talk to.
We left Mount Cook a little sore in the leg department and the next couple of days saw us both occasionally stopping to stretch. Fortunately we were staying with my Uncle in Oamaru, so we had a comfy bed, peace and quiet, plentiful walnuts (he has 4 walnut trees) and internet access – the perfect opportunity to catch up on some work! We had much to do because the day we set off on our few days of exploring the Banks Peninsula and Mt Cook National Park we found out our Expression of Interest for Residency in New Zealand had been accepted. We were invited to apply which meant preparing HUGE amounts of paperwork and organising postage of various forms and certificates from the UK that we hadn’t known we need.
Midway through our stay we had our first Dunedin event at Brighton Surf Life Saving Club. We spent the morning being jabbed and X-rayed for our Residency Medical then had a relaxed afternoon dozing in the sun by the Train Station before the expected drizzle set in. It was a very enjoyable evening in Brighton with nibbles aplenty afterwards and we’re noticing the increased awareness of White Shark cage diving the further South we head thanks to the same industry starting quite recently around Stewart Island. It’s currently a highly controversial topic in the area as many people are concerned that the business attracts sharks to boats and will result in White Sharks more readily approaching Paua [Abalone] divers and fishing boats.
That weekend we had to drive back up to Christchurch through the Canterbury plains to swap our car for a second Campervan. Extremely high winds on the journey back South through the endless miles of flatness buffeted our camper and bounced the aerial on the roof a lot until some manual jiggling silenced it. It was a very Jangly sound and thus was our roving home named Jangles!
We were back with my Uncle for a couple of days (picking kilos of walnuts!) before heading back to Dunedin where we were talking at Otago University – an event arranged at the Brighton evening a week before. Gummy shark sweets were once again on offer and a very generous £50 was collected in donations! We camped in Brighton that night as it was not far down the road and we knew it was quiet.
Despite the restful peace in Oamaru, Kathryn and I were both very tired and stressed from trying to catch up with Friends for Sharks work, organise our Residency application and a couple of issues that cropped up with our recent engagement, not least of which was the face of the shark falling out of the ring – I didn’t even know that could happen! The ring has since been sent to be sorted by the company we found in Nelson that we have contracted to make our wedding rings so hopefully we’ll have the ring back soon, we both miss it so much!
We had a couple of days before our next event in Balclutha so we planned to visit the Catlins with a stop at the Moeraki Boulders en-route. It was raining for much of the later part of the trip and we didn’t look forward to being cold and wet so we adjusted our plans from an active weekend of driving and walking and spent the money we would have put in to petrol and cooking gas to pay for a powered campsite at Newhaven Campground. We could not recommend this site more. Friendly, clean, great value, peaceful and next to a glorious beach (best explored at lower tides) which is home to the increasingly rare Hooker Sea Lions.
We were sorry to have to leave but we felt considerably refreshed though another week would have done us wonders! We drove back up towards Dunedin via Nugget Point. Interestingly, this is the only place in the World where an eyewitness record exists of a possible White Shark mating but despite our best efforts we were unable to spot a shark. We spent the evening and much of the next day with the Wendekreisen Managing Director and his family in Mosgiel. We had a wonderful time chatting shark and conservation in general and it was very interesting to hear details on how Carbon offsetting is not feasible for smallish businesses due to the very high admin cost. I’ll go in to more detail on that in another blog in due course but it was clear the company is in the hands of someone who really appreciates the environment and the wellbeing of his employees.
The next night was spent only a few miles from Newhaven Camp ground in the beautifully tucked away home of Jim and Jane who attended the evening’s event in Balclutha, hosted by Forest & Bird. It was a well attended evening which generated interesting questions and we met Devi Lockwood who is travelling around the world on a bike collecting stories about water and climate change.
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