Day Seven - 46 40 min 40 sec

After turning the car around on the roof of a doctor's surgery, we headed south out of Dunedin this morning with no real plan but to get to Invercargill via The Catlins.

First stop was Nugget Point and a walk out to the lighthouse. Along the way we stopped off to look at the Royal Spoonbill colony (who knew they nested on sea cliffs), and lots of sea lions and fur seals. The beach is about 70 metres below the walking track which meant two things. One, the animals behave more naturally, and two, the spotting scope really came in handy. We got to watch lots of male fur seals battling it out which was cool to see.

Nugget Point

Next was a quick walk to the hide at Roaring Bay to look for Yellow-eyed Penguin but no luck. (A fact I may have withheld in an earlier post is that at Bushy Beach, Lil Sis never actually saw a Yellow-eyed Penguin. Read on to see how that was rectified.)
 Following that we stopped for lunch at the Lumberjack Cafe in Owaka, a little town which was celebrating its 150th year.
 Down the road we stopped at Purakaunui Falls. After a short and very pretty walk through the rainforest we came to the falls which apparently are one of NZ's most photographed. (Can you believe it took us a week to see our first South Island waterfall?!)
 

The photogenic Purakaunui Falls

Fossilised log at the Petrified Forest

A quick stop at Florence Hill lookout gave us great views of Tautuku Bay.

It was about this time that Lil Sis read we could access the South Island's most southerly point. It was a little out of the way but we decided to go for it. On the way we stopped at the Petrified Forest, one of only three in the world. At low tide the remnants of a Jurassic era forest are exposed on the rocks. We wandered through the clearly visible fossilised stumps and logs before looking up to see a Yellow-eyed Penguin. We moved closer and sat down to watch it standing there on the rocks in broad daylight. It was one of those moments that happen when travelling when you just stop and think. 'Here I am sitting in the middle of a Jurassic forest watching the world's rarest penguin'. I love days like this, when you stumble upon the incredible.

Back on our mission to find the most southerly point we drove along a narrow, winding, hilly, unsealed and sometimes corrugated road (nothing we're not used to). At the end we found a gate into a sheep paddock, so we parked the car and tramped out across the pasture to the end of New Zealand. At 46 40 min 40 sec, we were really at the end of the road, gazing out over the Southern Ocean. And this place does have that 'end of the world' feeling about it. It's the same feeling you get in the north of Scotland.

Slope Point - the most southerly point of New Zealand's South Island

South Island's most southerly sheep

Back on the road we headed for Invercargill where we are staying tonight. It's the most southern city in NZ, with a population of 52,000.

So today we officially travelled the farthest south either of us have ever been. (My previous record was Gore, NZ and Lil Sis's was Wellington, NZ.) We went as far south as it is possible to go on mainland NZ but you know what we're like, we have to go further, so tomorrow we'll see what we can do about that.

Big Sis

Previous Day

Next Day