Dunedin
We set out in our bus through Dunedin, stopping at a park with a view of the harbor area. We'll be going to the land on the far side of the harbor, beyond the left edge of this photo, to see royal albatross and yellow-eyed penguins. The clouds this morning were particularly striking.
We saw Baldwin Street, claimed to be the "world's steepest street" and listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. It's apparently even steeper than San Francisco's Lombard Street. Lombard curves in a series of hairpin turns, while Baldwin is straight. At its steepest, is has about a 35% grade. Dunedin's streets are paved with asphalt (tarmac), except for the steep part of Baldwin Street: it's paved with concrete because asphalt tended to slide downhill in hot weather. That would be disconcerting if one were driving or walking on it at the time.
On our way we stopped again at the ornate train station that we saw briefly yesterday.
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| Brian Magill photo |
Royal Albatross Centre
Views from our bus as we headed for the Royal Albatross Centre.
We passed a group of cyclists, and sheep. Lots of sheep.
Our first view of the Royal Albatross Centre. The albatross are "royal", not the centre. According to Wikipedia, the Southern Royal Albatross is the second-largest of the albatross family, with a wingspan of 3 metres or just under 10 feet. The albatross centre is on the tip of Otego Peninsula at Taiaroa Head, at the site of a World War II gun emplacement that defended Dunedin's harbor. The structure atop the hill in the distance is part of the WWII complex, and now serves as a "blind" for viewing the albatross without entering their environment.
Our guide, Mary, explained that her facial tattoo was to honor her Māori ancestors and culture.
Birds or gun? We saw both; the half of the group I was with started with the gun.
The gun was put in place to counter perceived threats from Russia in the early 20th century and from the Japanese during World War II. It's a 6-inch Armstrong Disappearing Gun. "Disappearing" refers to how it works when fired. It's loaded in the lowered position shown here, down inside its bunker. An elevating mechanism then raises the gun above the bunker. When fired, the recoil recharges the elevating mechanism as it lowers the gun back into the bunker for reloading.
There were four such gun emplacements at strategic points in New Zealand. If the Japanese had been serious about invading New Zealand, though, I doubt that four individual 6-inch guns would have made much difference. Six inches is small compared to the guns on large warships, not to mention bombs dropped by planes from aircraft carriers.
The breech loading mechanism, and some (presumably dummy) projectiles. Guns this size and larger use projectiles that are separate from the powder charge. The projectile is rammed into the barrel through the breech, and then cloth bags of gunpowder are put in behind it.
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| Christa Wessel photo |
This gun was aimed by aligning a pointer with a 360-degree scale installed around the perimeter of the bunker. This portion of the scale is marked in red and has the words "Light House". The gunners had to be careful when aiming in this quadrant to avoid hitting the light house on the end of the peninsula.
From the gun, we moved into the observation point, a pillbox-like structure with a horizontal slit for a window. This is as close as we could get to the albatross, who were nesting just outside the pillbox on the side of the hill away from human habitation. Shooting photos through the not-very-clean glass in the window was a challenge, and reduced the crispness of the photos somewhat. Still, the birds are very impressive to see in flight.
The photo above has two albatross in it, which I didn't notice until I got home and looked at it on the large computer screen.
Brian got some good shots with his very long zoom lens.
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| Brian Magill photo |
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| Brian Magill photo |
I shot using the high-speed repeat mode of my camera, which can take several pictures per second. The birds appeared in the window with little or no warning and flew quickly. Considerable luck was involved in getting a bird in the camera's frame. Many of the photos capture no more than this, or even less:
Then again, sometimes the camera captured these:
What's missing is something familiar in the foreground to give an indication of the amazing size of the birds wings -- ten feet across. Consider that a six-foot person would just cover one of the bird's wings and its body.
Warning: Technical photog stuff ahead. For the albatross in flight photos, I typically used ISO 1600, 200mm focal length, 1ms exposure, f/16. My Nikon D300S camera's continuous autofocus setting was made for this situation, and it worked beautifully. I left a 300mm zoom lens at home, and I certainly could have used it here. But it was just one more (heavy) thing to carry, so I left it behind. I'll just have to come back. ;-)
As we left the albatross viewing point, there were plenty of birds nesting on the side of the hill: sea gulls.
We could still see albatross circling overhead and heading for their side of the peninsula.
In a display back inside the visitors' center, we could see how large the albatross really are.
We had lunch in the cafe before moving to a different part of the peninsula to look for penguins.
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| Christa Wessel photo |
Yellow-Eyed Penguins
Our bus took us to a wildlife sanctuary set up to provide a safe breeding area for rare Yellow-Eyed Penguins. Here we're waiting for our guides.
They're pretty serious about keeping the birds safe. In the past month they've cleared out rats, hedgehogs, and a stoat.
This little dog didn't seem like much of a threat.
A group of small buses took us several miles from the visitors' center to the sanctuary itself, through horse-country farms.
A rather steep walk down took us to the edge of the preserve.
That's the penguins' private beach, not used by boats, swimmers, or sunbathers. The penguins nest in the brush area at the bottom of the photo and further inland, not on the beach itself. This sort of penguin likes the privacy provided by trees and shrubs. They don't congregate in huge colonies such as we're used to seeing in documentaries about Antarctica.
The blue boxes visible in the photo below are plastic sleeves that keep the new vegetation from being eaten by animals before the penguins can take advantage of it. In the lower right corner of the first photo can be seen one of the fabric-covered "tunnels" that allow viewers like ourselves to move into the viewing points, which are blinds set partly into the ground so that not much more than the viewing slits are visible to the birds.
Some interesting birds appeared over the waters just off the beach. Not albatross, apparently -- albatross wings don't have a rim of white feathers on the top surface. The birds in the second photo (there are two, if you look closely) have completely dark bodies and wing colors that are the reverse of an albatross'.
Our guide explained about the preserve, and how we had to remain away from the penguins and other wildlife. The sheep didn't seem too concerned.
Taking pictures of the view, which included these sea lions.
Brian's long lens was able to get up close and personal with the sea lions:
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| Brian Magill photo |
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| Brian Magill photo |
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| Brian Magill photo |
It's easy to see why they're called Yellow-Eyed Penguins. One of them, a bachelor with no nest to tend, was just standing around in the open.
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| Brian Magill photo |
Others were in nests under brush, or under small roofs.
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| Brian Magill photo |
One of the "tunnels", and an observation post.
This trench leading to an observation point seemed like something out of World War I.
A view of a flax plant, such as we saw on the North Island around Rotorua.
More interesting sea birds on the way back to the buses.
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| Brian Magill photo |
A Pre-Dinner Recital
We were treated to a violin and piano recital at the music school by Tessa and John, friends of some of our travelers. They joined us for dinner a bit later.
Farewell dinner
We walked down a steep hill from our hotel to Speight's bar, where our farewell dinner was held.
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| Christa Wessel photo |
We were joined by Tessa and John, who performed for us about an hour earlier.
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| Christa Wessel photo |
We occupied two long tables right on the floor of the brewery.
Off to the airport tomorrow.
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