Queenstown Gardens – located on a peninsula adjacent to the main bay in Queenstown, the gardens are quite large and very pretty.
Some areas are manicured gardens…
Other areas feel like untouched forests.
And in the middle of the gardens, is the Lawn Bowling Club.
Views from the gardens are awesome.
Outdoor activities are highly regarded in Queenstown. In this one picture you can see (if you have good eyes!) people picnicking, kayaking, jet skiing and even parasailing. (You can just barely seen the parachute in the V of the mountains.) There is also sailing, jet boat tours, and these crazy craft I don’t know what they’re called: they are shaped like a shark, zoom across the top of the water, then can dive underwater maybe 10 or more feet, then jump up clear out of the water like a dolphin. Crazy fun!
The Great Crested Grebe is endangered, and they like to build their nests on floating objects. Like outboard motors… so they are being provided with more suitable platforms for nesting.
The drive to Invercargill was gorgeous too. I’ve got to stop saying that about everything, but it’s true…
We spent one night in Invercargill, near the south of the South Island of New Zealand. Early in the morning, we drove a bit further south, to Bluff, where we caught the ferry to Stewart Island. The ferry is a pretty high speed catamaran, and holds about 100 passengers. (and three crew.) It was full, and the captain said it would be pretty rough. It was quite rough! The pre-departure briefing discussed how to use the sick-sacks that were dispersed within arm’s reach from everyone, and at least 10 that were around us used them! The trip was about an hour, and we were glad we weren’t among the sack-users!
Stewart Island is enough south of the South Island, that the people haven’t messed it up too badly. Some say it looks like you step back in time 50 years. There are a few hotels, and a few eating establishments, but they’re not always open. We ended up having dinner at the only place available- the bar at the South Island Hotel. Twice!
A short walk (but a STEEP one) from the dock area takes you up to a nice vantage point.
Towards the top of the point is a picturesque little church.
The Bay Hotel was great; the hosts picked us and our bags, and let us check in mid-morning.
Early the next morning, we set out on a Pelagic Bird trip. Our guide would point out different species of ocean birds – and there were dozens!
This Silver Gull perched on the crane on the aft of our boat, looking askance at our activities.
We saw many types of Albatross… these huge birds soar along, many times with their wing tips just skimming the water.
At the beginning of our journey, the White-capped Albatross was the most frequently seen.
White-capped Albatross
Cape Petrel are pretty little black and white birds.
We hung out with a fishing boat for a few minutes, as he was attracting many birds!
These Buller’s Albatross have distinctive colors on their beaks, and a harsh looking eye. Maybe they don’t like us staring at their beaks!
This is a somewhat rare Southern Royal Albatross. We were fortunate to see a few. They sport a distinctive pink bill, and a 10 foot wingspan!
This one is brown. 🙂 I think he’s a Northern Giant-Petrel.
This following picture was NOT PHOTOSHOPPED! The boat’s captain had been throwing chum out for the birds for quite a while as we just drifted, and this big guy looks like he didn’t get his fair share!
See if you can find the Yellow-eyed Penguin! We looked hard for them!
These last are Salvin’s Albatross.
We also found a few Fiordland Penguins… and several Seals too.
Near our hotel was this New Zealand Kaka.
There was a gorgeous trail starting from across the street from our hotel. We hoped to find Kiwi there, but sadly, none.
The Kiwi are nocturnal, so we got up again at 11pm, and hiked all over for a while. Still no Kiwi. But we did see some other nice views, including the awesome star filled night.
Early the next morning, we hiked over the ridge to another little bay, to catch the water taxi to Ulva Island. This isn’t further south, but rather in one of the huge bays of Stewart Island. This island was special, because for a long time it had no natural predators for its bird population. Then somehow, rats came to the island, and ate birds and eggs and really threatened several species. An extensive program of trapping was undertaken, and the island was freed of rats. They are very careful now not to reintroduce them, and the birds are slowly gaining ground.
Where we awaited our water taxi, was this little shelter decorated with our name and shield!
The trip to Ulva was only about 10 minutes. Steward Island is quiet. Ulva is even more so. Except for a tour group, whose guide chose the same trails we did for a while. Once we lost that group, we saw very few people.
I should introduce you to one couple, however. We met Jose on the pelagic trip the previous day. He was friendly and very knowledgeable about all the birds we saw on the ocean. He and his wife went to Ulva on the same boat as we did, and we spent our time walking with them. Jose is amazingly good at finding and identifying birds, and Lee is also great at photographing them. They make a great team, and it was really fun to hang out with them! And of course, I forgot to take their pictures! Sigh. Fun people, though.
We saw several seals making a huge amount of noise! You could hear them a mile away!
Ok, here is one picture of Jose, Cherryl and Lee.
And we did see some birds… Another New Zealand Kaka,
These very inquisitive South Island robins would come very close to us, and even climbed all over Jose’s scope that he’d put on the ground. I barely got a picture of this elusive Yellowhead.
Here is a Variable Oystercatcher, and another Kaka
After we left Ulva island, we hiked to a viewpoint where we could look across the bay. Ulva is the big island near the horizon in the picture below, not the little tiny island in the foreground.
I wondered if I could get a comical effect with the panoramic function on the iPhone. Yes, I could:
We had a couple of birds that hung out right by the deck of our hotel room. This New Zealand Pigeon, a very large and pretty bird:
And this Tui. I have started calling them an R2DTui, because they make a quite varied bunch of calls, and a few sound just like the Star Wars character! They have a distinctive set of twin white feathers on their chest.
See if you can hear R2D2 in this little bit of their unusual calls, “borrowed” from Cornell Lab’s Merlin app:
After our trip to Ulva, we had lunch (again at the South Island Hotel) and our hosts at the Bay Hotel took our bags down to the ferry for us. Then we took the 3:30 ferry back to Bluff. A half hour’s drive took us back to Invercargill, where we got a little room.
In the morning, we headed for the Bill Richardson Transport World museum… because I knew you’d be missing something about cars in this blog!
Richardson has over 300 cars in this museum… well, that many vehicles. He is very partial to trucks, and probably 80 percent are trucks. It is very nicely done. Squeaky clean, with unusual and beautifully restored vehicles.
This Texaco tanker is one of 303 Dodge Airflow trucks built. Chrysler introduced the Airflow sedan, badged as both a Chrysler and a Dodge, in 1934. They were quite advanced, but the styling was not appreciated, and they didn’t go over well. They were discontinued in 1937, but apparently Dodge created a few special order trucks after that time, most created for oil companies. This beautiful tanker was built in 1940, the last year of production, for Texaco.
This 1911 Koehler truck has instructions cast into the floorboard.
“Caution
Not guaranteed
over 2000 lbs load
or speed above
16 miles per hour”
The pedals are also labeled, with letters that I’m unsure of what they mean.
This truck had Gutta Percha Tires! That might not mean a great deal to you, but Gutta Percha is used by dentists in sealing root canals. And I’m told it used to be in the center of golf balls. I’d never heard of gutta percha tires before.
I thought this was a crazy one-off installation for a driver to do hand signals. A metal hand at the end of a rod, hinged so the driver could raise it and indicate a turn, without actually sticking his arm out the window. Clever. But later on in the museum, I saw many trucks had these gadgets! I think it would let the signal be seen even when the truck had a bulky load behind, where his arm wouldn’t be long enough.
Here is a three wheeled truck, which we used to see in Europe sometimes.
Charles Cretors patented a steam powered machine in 1893 that could roast 12 pounds of peanuts, 20 pounds of coffee, or pop plenty of popcorn, all equally well. His success led him to create the “Special” – a complete snack stand on wheels, and adding hot dog roasting and ice cream chilling… by 1900. These were horse-drawn wagons, but soon Cretors was putting the wagons on chassis like this 1928 Ford. This machine is in fabulous shape.
I’ve long been a fan of the old Packards… but I didn’t know they made a truck! Here is a 1918 Packard Distillate Truck. Its first 30 years were spent on a vineyard in California, then on the east coast, and then in this collection in New Zealand!
This sad looking thing isn’t as pretty as most of the rest of the collection. There are no markings or notes about it. I studied the engine for a while… it looked familiar. It is a two cylinder, opposed, air cooled engine, driving the front wheels. “We” had a Citroen in “our” museum in Tucson, with that same powerplant. I asked a museum worker, and he verified – it is an old Citroen! I felt very happy to have recognized one is such a terrible condition. He also said they would eventually restore it – and it would look as nice as the rest of the vehicles in the collection do! I’ll have to come back in a decade or so.
Here is a 1951 Lanz Bulldog tractor. Lanz made tractors in Germany, from 1921 until the early 1960’s. John Deere bought the company in 1956, and for a while they were called John Deere-Lanz. The Lanz Bulldog was one of the most popular German tractors, with over 220,000 made. The name “Bulldog” is widely used as a synonym for tractor even today.
This unique little vehicle reminds me of a rocker that my father-in-law made for our daughters. His made a burro, but he would have loved this motorcycle.
There were a few vehicles we could get in, so I did. The “Pork Pie” Mini is from a movie of that name, which I haven’t seen, but was pretty big down here.
Bill also really liked VW’s and has a couple of interesting camping variations.
And even a VW pool table!
This museum is the only place I’ve ever taken a picture of the Men’s Room. Clean and amusing!
After we left the museum, and Invercargill, we headed back to Queenstown. Here are a few pictures of the downtown walkways, and the best Gelato we’ve found so far. (Patagonia)
