One of the three big attractions in Oamaru is a few pair of extremely rare Yellow Eyed Penguins. I think there are only 700 pairs of these harassed birds. Dogs and people are their biggest problems. Steve says they look like Sparky with his wrap around sun glasses in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon. We drove out Bushy Beach Road around 8:30 PM just before sun set, walked along a wooden path 200 feet above the orange sand beach, and found a pair of Yellow Eyes grooming each other just 20 feet off the path. Penguins are very shy, so it is surprising that they went about their business with a dozen tourists taking pictures from the other side of the railed walkway. Even more amazing is the climb they made through thick bush to get from the ocean up to their nest.
Oamaru’s second claim to fame is the colony of Little Blue Penguins, which at one foot tall, are the world’s smallest penguins. We paid our NZ$20 each and were admitted to a fenced area that used to be the limestone quarry on the rocky beach at the edge of town. We sat in the covered grandstand along with about a hundred other people and waited for the Little Blues to return to their nests under the cover of darkness after a day of fishing in the ocean. While we waited, a guide told us the Little Blues swim 25 km per day in search of food and dive between 1,000 and 1,500 times. Per day! He claimed they only sleep for a few minutes at a time, and are usually awake. They are unable to see the sodium lights that illuminate the rocky beach and the grassy terrace where some of them live, but they could see and would be frightened by camera flashes, so anyone who uses a camera would be asked to leave.
Finally, at 9:12 PM, the first raft of fifty penguins was swept onto the rocky shore by the waves. The guide says the birds are very tough, and in the five years he has been giving this talk, he has never seen an injured bird, even when rough seas hurl them onto the rocks. Seeing them land was the highlight of the trip for me. They pull themselves up on their feet, then stand around looking at each other for a while. Although they live in colonies, no one is in charge. They bend over like old men and wait for someone else to make a move. Eventually one of them gets brave enough, or gets shoved to the front, and the temporary leader jumps to the next rock and starts climbing across the boulders, using his webbed feet and flippers to slowly work his way up to the terrace. Sometimes they jump and miss their mark, and slip back down, but they get up and continue clamboring to their nests. It’s absolutely adorable to the humans, but I am also struck by how hard their life is, and how they are anything but cartoons, but very real creatures with unbelievable challenges.
It is breeding season, and until the chicks are about eight weeks old, one of the parents stays with the chicks during the day while the other goes out to sea to fish. After eight weeks, both parents go to sea, so the number of penguins returning each night varies. We were there on a very good night, and got to see over 150 penguins arrive over the course of an hour in about six rafts.
We were even more lucky to see two fuzzy brown chicks about six weeks old and nine inches tall standing around hungrily waiting for their parents to return. I was getting worried about them, because most of the adults seemed to have returned. The chicks went into a neighbor's rocky nest to look for help, but were promptly evicted. I asked the guide whether any of the other adults would take care of them if something happened to their parents, and he said no, they would die. As he was saying that, the parent returned and the chicks noisily chased him around, demanding that the parent regurgitate fish into their mouths. The guide said we can see why the harried parent was in no hurry to return.
Not all the penguins choose to live in the fenced area, and many wander the streets of Oamaru, going under buildings and screaming and growling all night. We could hear the wee birds from our room, five blocks up the hill. It was wonderful.
Monday November 24 we had breakfast in Oamuru public gardens among beautiful exotic trees and flowers, magpies, mallards and birdsong in the trees. Then we were off to inspect Oamaru’s third wonder: Oamaru Stone. Most of the commercial buildings and many homes are made of locally quarried stone, which the locals claim is soft and easily carved when fresh out of the ground, but it supposedly becomes hard after exposure to the air. It looks to us like limestone, which is a beautiful if odd building material for such a wet place. It seems to deteriorate where the fancy column capitols and pediment dentils are exposed to roof leaks, just like regular limestone. But it does make for a very elegant little town.
We changed some more money, and the exchange rate has again slid in our favour: NZ$1 to US$0.543.
We had lunch at the wonderful Whiskey Tea House in a grain and wood warehouse built of Oamaru Stone in 1882 next to the harbour. The ceilings were twenty feet tall, there were gigantic timbers holding everything up, and the dining room was illuminated by huge arched windows. Steve had salmon caught this morning, and I had vegetarian lasagna with spinach and a big pumpkin layer. Delicious. The Kiwis sure know their way around pumpkins and kumara.
Next door to the Whiskey was another limestone warehouse where the local bicycle club kept their collection of antique bicycles. A man in a nineteenth century vest and bowler hat was helping the tourists ride a bicycle with a front wheel five feet tall, as well as vintage tricycles. More magic.
