Southland

Today I headed south. I stopped at a few places along the road for photos. When I got to the southern coastline, I stopped at Gemstone Beach (didn’t find any). Then I headed eastward and bypassed the Southland’s large city of Invercargill. I traveled through more rolling grassy hills dotted with sheep. I’m now in the Catlins, but still on the coast. My stop for the night is at Curio Bay. It has a very small breeding colony of the extremely endangered Yellow-Eyed Penguin. They spend the day at sea catching fish and come back ashore in the evening. I did manage to see one of the little guys. They are very shy and you aren’t supposed to get closer than 30 feet to them. There are New Zealand Sea Lions in the area, but I didn’t see any today. I will be looking for them the next few days.


On the way south, I saw this scene beside the road. No place to stop, so I just stopped in the road. I hadn’t seen a car in 15 minutes so there’s not much traffic to worry about.


This is another spot along the road.


I couldn’t resist this Heather blooming along a small stream.


Looking westward toward the last of the Southern Alps.


This is a view of the end of the Southern Alps range from Gemstone Beach. Though I didn’t find any gems of the geological variety, this photo is an optical gem. This is the last mountain photo that I will get for awhile since I’m now heading southeast away from the mountains.


Though I didn’t find any gems on the beach, there were some interesting sandstone formations.


The farmers use 4x4 quad bikes to herd the sheep. The farmer’s sheep dog rides along to supervise the herding. The tracks they have left in this grass makes it look like its a golf course and a couple golf carts came through.


The life of a lamb: drink some milk, eat some grass, take a nap.


These two lambs each have a side of their own.


This is Slope Point. It is the southernmost point on the South Island. If you go due south from here, next stop is Antarctica.


It’s always windy at Slope Point. The trees are permanently bent in the direction of the prevailing wind.


At Curio Bay, actually just around the corner of the actual bay, there is a 160 million year old petrified forest at the high tide line. You can see leaf prints and a bit of “woodgrain” in some of the rocks.


You can also see the tree bark turned to stone.


Some of it looks like real wood embedded in the stone, but it’s all rock now.


Here is one of the Yellow-Eyed Penguins that come ashore here.


They spend the whole day at sea catching fish, then come ashore to their nests at dusk.