Timaru - Better Luck Next Time!

Tuesday 4 March

After a long night of rain we woke in Shrek’s swamp at the raceway - puddles everywhere… but this didn’t stop the local jockeys taking the horses out for training gallops and gentle cantering round the track.

Louis headed into town to swim at the pool and dropped me off at Liquid Laundromat on the way. Took a walk to the lighthouse during the wash and to Pak’n’Save during the tumble drying!

After lunch back at Banjo we drove over to Patiti Point to see if we could see any sealife and walk the coastal track along the beach - failed at both! No sealions or penguins to be seen and the coastal path southward was largely washed out so you had to head inland for quite a way through residential streets and the cemetery.

Louis headed into town again to pick up his prescription and I took the coastal path north to meet him at Caroline Bay. Somehow the official path and my map did not overlap and I found myself walking through the industrial port area which was kinda cool and interesting, but not the beachy path I’d envisaged! The vast number of shipping containers stacked up at the por was staggering and made quite a sci-fi dystopian backdrop!

One of the industrial outlets I passed was an enormous warehouse building making ropes and cables and fishing net - so it was kinda cool to see that the chainlink fence a little further on by the railway track was decorated with rope people and rope landscapes.

After dinner at Banjo and a stunning rainbow overhead, we drove back to Caroline Bay to watch the little blue penguins come in for the night. The details online said to get there for sunset and they all flood in on the tide shortly thereafter and waddle/run up the beach to their nests in the dunes and the rocks along the harbour front. These little blue penguins, fairy penguins or kororā are Australasian natives and can famously be seen at Phillip Island near Melbourne, in Tasmania and along the south east coast of Aotearoa with a big colony at Oamaru as well as a smaller rookery here at Timaru as well as many Kiwi islands in the region.

Almost two freezing cold hours later we gave up and came home after finding out via a FB page that the penguins hadn’t been returning to the beach for the last month… doh!