Catlins - Day 2

I realised today that we are still in Otago as Southland does not start until a few kms along the road. Then you are in an area called Chaslands

The first walk today was to McLean Falls, after the usual latte in order to get us going of course. This was a 40 minute trip amongst spectacular bush and falls. Then we back tracked down the road to Tahakopa Bay where we followed the old coach road, through podocarp forest, to a moa hunter camp. But we never got there because we forgot the aim of the walk, and were only interested in ensuring that we only walked for twenty minutes. The confusion arose because according to the instructions, which we did not bring with us, there was a further walk for another two hours and we did not feel that ambitious so once twenty minutes was up, we walked back again. I need to find out about the meaning of a podocarp forest.

As a change from all the bush walking we visited the “Lost Gypsy” Curios which is based in an old bus (the shop). It is full of found objects, and the speciality being self-wound automata and things that go whirr. There are lots of little cam driven apparatus. The artist who put it all together has his studio there and is very talkative. We then went into his gallery of larger pieces such as the cycle driven TV, cinema, and music studio. Every item moves and makes noises, for example, the sheep skeleton on the bicycle bleats as it pedals. Fascinating! The artist, Blair Sommerville is a very clever man.

Then it was off to Curio Bay to see the Jurassic era fossil forests. I went to Curio Bay twice as a child, the second time we camped amongst the flax bushes for one night, and I ended up with a swollen face because of mosquito bites. Curio Bay still has the same camping ground, but there are very strange toilets and showers in old tank stands, and a small camp store/cafe. So we had quite a nice latte there plus a huge hokey-pokey icecream which is a NZ speciality. Basically it is vanilla ice cream with tiny bits of honey comb in it. People in NZ ice cream shops are not mean as they always put three scoops of ice cream in the cone, and that is called a single ice cream. Fabulous!

The forest was destroyed thousands or millions of years ago because it rained and the ash from the local volcano was washed down into the forest and the silica turned the wood into rock within a few months. Over the years the sea has eroded the area and uncovered the plateau of rock and tree stumps and trunks.

The broom is out in colour and there is lots of it on the hills as we drove out of Dunedin and also around here. It looks beautiful but is not a native, and like the gorse and hawthorn which is also out in flower, has taken over so much of the farmland. I have been told that when the native bush grows gorse is not a threat but it certainly grows thickly around the edges of the bush. Finally, it was back to the motel where we cooked our own dinner in the kitchen attached to the motel. We are thinking about our waistlines.