I had quite a cosy night in my PJs but poor Matty
didn't fare so well 'cos he'd insisted on using the cheapy sleeping bag we
bought as a blanket for us both and sleepy Anj had nicked it.
Matt had the morning doing the obligatory
fiddling that he has to do with any new car and fixed the rear speaker.
I felt my first after-shock. It felt like a large
lorry going past and rattling everything but I guess the guys are more
sensitive to it after more 12300 aftershocks. They looked it up shortly and it
measured 4.5 on the Richter scale and had originated in the sea quite near
Gary's house. Most of them are fairly mild now and the likelihood of another
big one is low but they are still constant. There had been about 12 in the
previous 7 days and, although I'd heard they had happened, it was the first I'd
noticed.
Matt came in from the shower immediately after and
made us all laugh. Richard asked him, "Did you feel that?" but Matt
misunderstood and replied, "Yeah, it was lovely." He hadn't noticed
it at all as he'd walked through the workshop.
We waved goodbye, promising photographs, and
headed on our way. We had a quick stop to buy some rather fetching pink boxes
to store our stuff in under the bed then set off down the East Coast.
The views down the East Coast were breathtaking
in places. We could see the same mountains we had on the plane and they no
looked unbelievable - less like a documentary and more like a fantasy.
It was hard to keep cracking on to Oamaru and not
stop at some of the pretty looking places on the way but we made it.
The town itself was a fabulous-looking place. A
real Victorian industrial section retained lots of its originality and had been
sensitively restored to avoid making any of it look overly-polished. The whole
historical area just seemed to have gravity and poise.
We stopped at the port by the most awesome kid's
park I've ever seen. It had a giant penny farthing as a frame for the swings
and some industrial machinery (not sure what you call a crane mounted on a
train) as a climbing frame. There's no way a local council at home would have
approved it for health and safety reasons.
I had a quick jog around the port and swallowed
lots of flies while Matt wandered around and read the info signs. The was a
curved-approach wooden wharf on one side of the port and great big warehouses
from the time of the area's main industries of wool and grain on the other.
Lots of the buildings still had their original signage and were now used for an
art gallery, hat shop, whiskey purveyors, an off-beat bar and a host of other
establishments that were unfortunately closed. There were also lots of relics from
the locomotive era dotted around on the path. They were really rusty and looked
like they might once have been buried beneath the sea but they added to the
atmosphere.
One of the reasons we'd chosen Oamaru was because
of the penguins there. At the edge of the port there was a colony for Blue
Penguins where you could see them come home after a days fishing. We were told
by an old guy - who we'd seen rowing a surfboard on the water - not to bother
paying to go in the colony but to wait by the wharf to see them cross the road
to bed.
We'd read at the tourist info that we should go
at 7.45 at this time of year but we arrived about half an hour early. By 8.30
we were freezing but all the people who'd paid weren't out yet and so we
thought maybe they hadn't come home.
A car pulled in and a family got out, looked over
the beach and then headed back to the car when they didn't see anything. The
man told us that he'd just seen penguins and sea-lions on Bushy Beach and that
we might be better heading there. I wasn't ready to give up so got chatting to
a Turkish guy to pass the time. He told us that last time he'd paid to go to
the colony, they'd seen the penguins really far away and then walked outside
and seen lots of them on the road and so had decided to stay out there while
his wife took the kids to the proper viewing area.
It must have been about 9pm and very dark when we
finally caught sight of a tiny little penguin cautiously making it's way up the
boat ramp from the sea. It looked very unsure of itself and spent lots of time
huddling in the shadows. It turned out to be rather brave though and it wasn't
long until it put its tiny little head down and ran across the road as fast as
it could.
Other penguins eventually turned up and huddled
in groups under a bush waiting for the bravest the take the first steps out of
the shadows. Unfortunately, this seemed to coincide with when many cars started
to leave the colony so it was a good job that a volunteer 'Penguin Advocate'
was there to stop them being ploughed over.
We found a lovely camping spot up on the cliff
overlooking the sea and looked forward to a day of doing some of the things
we'd read about.
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