Townsman Motor Lodge Invercargill

... atmosphere in the place. Another interesting fact is that Cape Reinga is where the Tasman meets the Pacific and you can see the difference by the colours and movement in the water.
We went on a coach trip instead of driving ourselves so that we could travel along 90 mile beach, which is really only 60 miles long. The confusion arose because the average distance you can move cattle in a day is supposed to be about ...

... woodpidgeons, even a white tailed deer that had wondered out of the bush (NZ only has one native mammal a bat). There are pristine beaches everywhere.
We caught the last flight back but if you are game there are ferry crossings from Bluff. We meet some people on the flight whole invited us to their home for dinner, they cooked us some Blue Cod they had caught earlier in the day along with some paua (abalone). But the best course was the starter of Bluff Oysters ...

... around southeast asia, and tubing - still a major highlight of the trip for me, even after everything we've been through and done! if only we'd risked taking a camera down the river, in a dry bag, to capture the whole, wet and weird experience! longreach... the next morning following another long conversation with the canadians and a long convoy stalk to winton, where that dude - sorry, can't remember his name - once sang 'waltzing matilda', sean and i left the canadians to ...

... of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people." It is cool that God spoke that verse to Kathryn because at the end of the week, her mom said that she received the same verse from the Lord for us and had been praying it over us ...

... in the icey wind, shaking with cold and nerves, but none of us willing to admit that they wished to return to the car. Then, in the distance, Becky spotted something. I thought it was a log, and was quite embarrassed when she whipped out her camera and started snapping away. As we got closer, the log rolled over and raised its flippers. The sealion was enormous. Two German guys went right up to it and started taking pictures. I edged closer, keeping well behind the Germans ...

... lifes lost of which there are several per year. I can tell you, there have been some very brave, heroic pioneering people that have climbed and attempted to climb the mountain, as well as some apparently stupid, ill equipped people. All very interesting though. Having said that we were never going to climb it, we did do a walk in the park, which took us to the base of, the very ugly, Hooker Glacier. It's ugly because the face of the glacier is full of rock, stones and ...

... rugby stadium - Southland plays at the ground in Invercargill, which was just by our hotel - Visit to the Invercargill museum, which had loads and loads to see and was free of charge. The main attraction at the museum was the reptile Tuatara (like a big/hard covered lizard!) - the celebrities were Henry (aged 120) and Mildred (aged 80) who ...

... by candlelight). Stockings as usual - this year with mostly Kiwi tack and lacking the usual Christmas paper hankies, toothbrush, satsuma, nut and pound coin but lots of fun. No lunch preparation but a leisurely morning thinking of our family with a sprinkling of tears followed by a phone calls to friends and relatives (for whom, of course, it was Christmas Eve!) with a lot of laughter and then followed lunch at the Cabbage Tree ...

... my stuff and as I did found myself wishing it was for the journey home. It sounds pathetic just 36 hours later, but I was rock bottom fed up - the creeping feeling of lonelyness from the day before had become a full on black cloud and I was feeling sorry for myself. This wasn't really the best time to have a self pitty attack. For the next 5 days I had no accommodation booked and hadn't even decided where I was heading once I picked up my hire car. I'd felt this before a couple of ...

... leading to a lot of birds losing their ability to fly as there was no need for it. The predators were mainly birds of prey that would pick their food from the skies or the canopy. Hence ground-dwelling birds knew no predators and were well protected by the trees. The introduction of man and other mammals has since led to extinction (the giant Moa) or near-extinction (Kakapo, Takahe = big flightless parrots) of these unique NZ birds. Enough natural history, bloody smart-ass German...
Invercargill, South Island, New Zealand wenzels