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Thursday, March 24 – Dunedin

The first thing we did today was to visit the Settler's Museum to learn more about the settling of Dunedin. We had been told that Dunedin reminded folks immigrating of Scotland. But in fact four businessmen decided to purchase a lot of land and develop it. Since there were financial problems in Scotland in the mid-1800's, they named things in a way that would make Scottish folks feel that this would be familiar and thus lure them to immigrate. Why “Dunedin?” People thought “New Edinburgh” was a boring name, so they named it “Dunedin” from “Dùn Èideann”, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh. The Settler's Museum had interesting displays about the ship's voyage from Scotland, including the amount of luggage each passenger could bring (darned little, and the luggage had to include the dishes you ate off on the ship) and the food provided for each passenger (1# preserved meat, ½# preserved fish, ¼# tripe, 3# biscuits, ½ pint peas, ½# cheese, 6 oz suet, 28 quarts water ... can't you just imagine the gourmet meals?).

Emigration

This is the First Presbyterian Church, located near the Settler's Museum.

Presbyterian Church

Our next stop was the Chinese Garden, built by the Chinese community of Dunedin with assistance from Shanghai, Dunedin's sister city in China. It is a peaceful and charming place.

Chinese Garden

Chinese Garden

Next on the agenda was a free open-air show of "The Best of the Fringe," shows, part of the Fringe Festival which was going on the week we were in Dunedin. I was even invited to participate in one show, standing there while a couple of good looking young guys danced around me!

Best of the Fringe

Then on to the big event of the day, a trip out the Otago Peninsula to see penguins and other wildlife, followed by a cruise back up the Otago Harbor to Dunedin. Gorgeous views as we drove along the high road down the center of the Otago Peninsula. You may be getting tired of these views, but we sure aren't!

View of Otaga Harbor

View of the Pacific

We saw a number of endangered species, including this variable oystercatcher (I love the name - I wonder what's variable about it?).

Variable oystercatcher

We saw a pied stilt and were told that the black stilt is in danger of elimination due to its interbreeding with the pied stilt. But that says to me that the black stilt is just a color morph of the pied stilt, not a separate species.

At the yellow-eyed penguin colony, we had a good presentation about these endangered penguins and visited the hospital where they care for injured penguins and young penguins which are not thriving. They have had good success with releasing these penguins back into the wild. We then spent about an hour walking around the colony, stopping in a number of blinds which have been built so you can see the penguins without disturbing them. While we were there, we also saw several fur seals up close.

Yellow-eyed penguin

Fur seal

Next we hopped onto a boat for a wildlife cruise. It was wonderful (although a bit rough since we sat still in the boat near the shore where the harbor meets the open ocean). Very few good photos, though, because our camera just can't zoom in enough to take effective photos of small critters.

We saw many royal albatross, some using their 3 meter wing span to soar above the cliffs and others performing courtship rituals like touching bills and spreading their wings on shore. We were told that an albatross may fly as much as 190,000 kilometers in a year, being out at sea for months at a time.

We saw a lot of Stewart Island shags on the sides of the cliff. In the US, these birds are called cormorants. They build odd nests which look like chimney pots from mud and grass. We also saw two other kinds of shags on the cliff: spotted shags and little shags.

Stewart Island shags

After seeing several blue penguins in nesting boxes on previous days, we finally saw one in the wild on this wildlife cruise when one came swimming up to our boat. They are the cutest little things, fortunately not endangered.

We also saw the most active fur seal colony I've ever seen, with babies scampering up the cliffs or bugging their mothers for food.

Then we cruised up the Otago Harbor back to Dunedin at dusk. More lovely views.

View of Otago Harbor at dusk

 
       
 
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