Invercargill

4th December 2009 Another good nights sleep after all the exhilaration and fresh air of yesterday and our luck with the weather seems to be changing, since despite our fears to the contrary, today has been another sunny, cloudless day, albeit with a cooling breeze. One of the things we learnt yesterday on our tour was that before man arrived in New Zealand, the only mammal it possessed was a bat, hence the high number of flightless birds in the country. It seems like the majority of NZ’s native species are endangered or under serious threat all due to introduced species like the rat, dog, possom and stoat. ...

5th December 2009 This morning we visited the Anderson Park Art Gallery which was just a ten minute drive from our campsite. This is a wonderful art gallery housed in a grand, 1925 Georgian-style manor which itself is set in some delightful landscaped gardens. We started by exploring the grounds, including the 70 year old Monkey Puzzle tree, the bridge over the duck pond and the miniature rose garden. After a walk through native woodland which although it looks like it’s been there forever, was actually planted, we came to the back of the house and a wharepuni (Maori sleeping house) where one of the owner’s daughters was married in the 1930s. ...