Oamaru

I was really excited about Oamaru. Not only is it supposed to be a quirky Victorian, steampunk town but it is also the home of the little Blue Penguin colony. We started the morning with a wander up and down the main streets, past the old Victorian buildings, popping into quirky vintage shops and galleries on the way.

After lunch we wandered down along the harbour, past hundreds of cormorants that were nesting on one of the old wooden docks. We then popped into the Blue Penguin colony to buy our tickets to watch the penguins return home from their long day at sea. The viewing wasn't until 6pm so we walked up to a viewing point where you could see out over Oamaru.

At the i-site we had visited in the morning, the lady had said that we may be able to see some Yellow-Eyed Penguins if we headed out to Bushy Beach. We had a few hours to kill so we headed out there and hid in a hide for around an hour. There were a few seals on the beach but no penguins so we made our way back to the main town in time for the Blue Penguin viewing. Even if there had been some Yellow-Eyed Penguins, it would have been very difficult to see them without binoculars as we were so far away from the beach.

The Blue Penguin reserve had around 350 nesting boxes that the penguins used. They were completely wild but the reserve was a safe place for the penguins to call home. For the viewing, we were seated by the edge of the sea so that we could see the penguins come out of the sea, climb out on the rocks and head back to their homes after a very long day fishing out at sea. Whilst we were waiting for the first penguins to come home we were given some penguin facts. They wait off shore and then swim in together as a raft so we were very excited when we saw the first group swim in. Blue Penguins are only 30cm tall so they are pretty tiny. It was so cute to watch them clamber up the rocks and then run into the reserve. There they would congregate under the walkway and prune themselves. In total we saw around 100 penguins come back in around 4 separate groups. Unfortunately we weren't able to take any photos. This is because if the penguins get scared they won't come home. There were a couple of fur seals asleep on the rocks where the penguins climbed out. The seals don't eat penguins but they don't know that so some of them took a long time to sneak past them. I could of sat and watched them for hours however after around an hour and a half the viewing was over.Read more