Sandfly Bay
The best thing about summer in Dunedin is the sixteen hours of sunlight - not quite as much as in Grande Prairie, where I grew up, but still plenty to bracket all of the things you could hope to do in a single day's light. I'm not one of those people whose general mood shifts with the absense of sun, but I'm also not a huge fan of running around in the dark, so I tend to be much more productive in the summer. When the 6pm sun looks like a 2pm sun, it seems reasonable to have a lot of activity left in the day. (When the 6pm sun is a moon, on the other hand, it seems reasonable to make some dinner, curl up with something hot in front of a movie and then head to bed.)
My friend Anne is a Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust volunteer at Sandfly Bay, on the peninsula near here. For about 7 months of the year, during the breeding and chick-rearing seasons, she spends her Saturday evenings from 5pm until dusk (about 5 hours this time of year) on the beach giving people information about the wildlife they see and keeping them far enough away that the animals aren't disturbed. Since both the penguins and the Hooker's Sea Lions that make the beach home are critically endangered, this is a really important job.
For the last two Saturdays in a row, I've gone down to Sandfly with Anne. The first week I went out of curiosity, having seen the bay from the lookout point on the hill (high) above, but never from sea level. I followed her around all night, being a tourist and also soaking in the information (which I heard repeated about three dozen times). The weather was calm and beautiful, the white sand comfortably warm, the sky alive with shifting clouds coloured extravagantly by both a long sunset and a full moonrise. The two chicks on the cliffs at one end of the beach spent hours out on a rock, fluffy and grey and distinctly un-penguin like, while their parents cuddled on a ledge below. At the opposite end of the beach, another penguin waddled through the masses of fur seals sunning themselves and on up the steep hill to its nest, tilting the whole way at an alarming angle but making it nonetheless. One playful sea lion kept popping in and out from behind various sand dunes at people, or laying across the (only) path up to the viewing hide, absurdly resembling a very eager (and overgrown!) puppy. Except for the brutal climb up a very steep, very long and very shifty sand dune at the end of the night to get back to the car, it was pretty much a perfect evening.
I woke up the next morning with sand in my bed and a smile on my face. Having passed the volunteer 'test' (ie, still smiling and asking for more), the second Saturday Anne put my name in the log book and put me to work. The weather wasn't nearly as nice as the week before, although at least it wasn't raining on us like it was on the city. The name 'Sandfly' didn't come from the bugs (which are nasty biting things common elsewhere in NZ, but not here), but rather from the persistant blowing that creates what Anne euphemistically calls 'textural winds' - air you can literally see. I spent a significant portion of the evening bundled into my winter coat, shaking sand out of my ears. Having volunteered on the beach for the last 3 years, she was smart and had a scarf to wrap around her face, lawrence of arabia style, to keep out the worst of the gusts. And despite the grey, people came...and animals too. Many, many more of each than the beautiful week before.
The chicks were out on their rock again, newly penguin-like with white-bellies beginning to venture down to the lower ledge where their parents yelled encouragement. My job was to sit at the base of the dune that leads to the beach, 200 meters back from the cliff, and catch people first thing when they came down. So many interesting people! For an over-talkative, know-it-all, teacher type, this was pretty much a perfect job for me. The fact that it was on what is probably one of the most spectacular stretches of sand anywhere in the world, filled with penguin 'song', was also a perk! Anne spent most of her evening at the opposite end of the beach, at the viewing hide, helping people avoid the very, very active sea lions. During a quiet spell later in the evening, we walked down the beach together with 3 young French people, just in time to see a succession of penguins pop out of the waves and make for their nests inland. And also in time to see 2 big male sea lions have a fight (at the base of the path to the viewing hide, of course, where a group of tourists were stuck), with 2 baby girl sea lions playing in the grass behind them. Up and down the beach sea lions came in and out of the waves, sizing people up as possible playmates, and penguins waddled. I talked to people from Scotland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Canada (from my old university!), New York (big strapping guy who owns a florist on 5th...fun!), and Uruguay. Easily worth every grain of sand I injested throughout the night. And next day.
My friend Anne is a Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust volunteer at Sandfly Bay, on the peninsula near here. For about 7 months of the year, during the breeding and chick-rearing seasons, she spends her Saturday evenings from 5pm until dusk (about 5 hours this time of year) on the beach giving people information about the wildlife they see and keeping them far enough away that the animals aren't disturbed. Since both the penguins and the Hooker's Sea Lions that make the beach home are critically endangered, this is a really important job.
For the last two Saturdays in a row, I've gone down to Sandfly with Anne. The first week I went out of curiosity, having seen the bay from the lookout point on the hill (high) above, but never from sea level. I followed her around all night, being a tourist and also soaking in the information (which I heard repeated about three dozen times). The weather was calm and beautiful, the white sand comfortably warm, the sky alive with shifting clouds coloured extravagantly by both a long sunset and a full moonrise. The two chicks on the cliffs at one end of the beach spent hours out on a rock, fluffy and grey and distinctly un-penguin like, while their parents cuddled on a ledge below. At the opposite end of the beach, another penguin waddled through the masses of fur seals sunning themselves and on up the steep hill to its nest, tilting the whole way at an alarming angle but making it nonetheless. One playful sea lion kept popping in and out from behind various sand dunes at people, or laying across the (only) path up to the viewing hide, absurdly resembling a very eager (and overgrown!) puppy. Except for the brutal climb up a very steep, very long and very shifty sand dune at the end of the night to get back to the car, it was pretty much a perfect evening.
I woke up the next morning with sand in my bed and a smile on my face. Having passed the volunteer 'test' (ie, still smiling and asking for more), the second Saturday Anne put my name in the log book and put me to work. The weather wasn't nearly as nice as the week before, although at least it wasn't raining on us like it was on the city. The name 'Sandfly' didn't come from the bugs (which are nasty biting things common elsewhere in NZ, but not here), but rather from the persistant blowing that creates what Anne euphemistically calls 'textural winds' - air you can literally see. I spent a significant portion of the evening bundled into my winter coat, shaking sand out of my ears. Having volunteered on the beach for the last 3 years, she was smart and had a scarf to wrap around her face, lawrence of arabia style, to keep out the worst of the gusts. And despite the grey, people came...and animals too. Many, many more of each than the beautiful week before.
The chicks were out on their rock again, newly penguin-like with white-bellies beginning to venture down to the lower ledge where their parents yelled encouragement. My job was to sit at the base of the dune that leads to the beach, 200 meters back from the cliff, and catch people first thing when they came down. So many interesting people! For an over-talkative, know-it-all, teacher type, this was pretty much a perfect job for me. The fact that it was on what is probably one of the most spectacular stretches of sand anywhere in the world, filled with penguin 'song', was also a perk! Anne spent most of her evening at the opposite end of the beach, at the viewing hide, helping people avoid the very, very active sea lions. During a quiet spell later in the evening, we walked down the beach together with 3 young French people, just in time to see a succession of penguins pop out of the waves and make for their nests inland. And also in time to see 2 big male sea lions have a fight (at the base of the path to the viewing hide, of course, where a group of tourists were stuck), with 2 baby girl sea lions playing in the grass behind them. Up and down the beach sea lions came in and out of the waves, sizing people up as possible playmates, and penguins waddled. I talked to people from Scotland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Canada (from my old university!), New York (big strapping guy who owns a florist on 5th...fun!), and Uruguay. Easily worth every grain of sand I injested throughout the night. And next day.
posted by Roberta | 6:06 AM
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