Sunday afternoon Brighton Beach

Brighton is a small town close to Dunedin, just a little further south and east along the coast. From our house in North Dunedin, it took only twenty minutes to drive there on a Sunday afternoon in early January. The day had started out brilliantly sunny, so I thought a walk on the beach at low tide would be fun. In typical Dunedin fashion, by the time low tide had arrived in mid-afternoon, the weather had completely changed, but it wasn't raining, so we went. In the first photo, you can see the town of Brighton nestled on the hills above the beach.

After we walked for a while, we were thrilled to see a seal coming up out of the water. The seals here are New Zealand fur seals, and we saw hundreds of them on a rock at the mouth of Doubtful Sound in November. The first Europeans who lived in New Zealand were whalers and sealers. This is the closest I've gotten to one. This fellow stayed on the beach for about 10 minutes, then ambled back into the water.