With the Catlins Coast behind us, we popped into Dunedin had a quick squizz at the ornate railway station, complete with a tiled mosaic of various train paraphenalia, and drove the winding road out to the end of the Otago peninsula. The road hugged the coastline tightly, and actually looked as though it was on reclaimed land, as there was hardly ever more than a foot to the sea, and meant I actually had to look where I was driving. However, we had the luxury of tarmac, which is a lot more than can be said for a certain “scenic” route we took yesterday!
At the end of the peninsula, the Royal Albatross have been nesting there for the past 80 odd years, oddly choosing the site once the Kiwis had put a few huge cannons on it, and also having their hefty (500g) eggs used to make rather large omelletes! It is just coming to the end of the nesting season, so there were a couple of chicks waiting to be fed, although they are larger than their parents and look like huge lumps of cottonwool in the grass. We’d seen different Albatross back in Tasmania, and you know they are big, but seeing photos of these huge birds next to humans puts it into perspective, as their body is about the same size as a human torso, and they have a wingspan of 3 metres. Whilst we watched the chicks, a young Albatross was gliding around, taunting us all with how easy it was for him to fly (I don’t think I saw a flap of wings), and how hard it was to photograph – as you can see!