Familiar places: St Clair Beach, Olveston House, Taiaroa Head

We've been in Dunedin six weeks now, and we've visited some of our old favorite familiar places. When we left New Zealand in 2017, I was totally surprised to find that what I missed most, in addition to friends, was the beaches. St. Clair is our city beach with benches and surfing. Our son, Mike, spent Christmas 2007 with us in Dunedin and wrote his masters thesis at the Hydro Cafe, at the end of the line of buildings in the photo. A couple of weeks ago, it was pure joy to sit on a bench, listen to the waves and seagulls, and watch a lone surfer float around among the waves.

It was also a joy to revisit the gardens at Olveston, a large Dunedin home built in 1904-1906 by a wealthy Jewish family, one of only a few Jewish families in this city. Their son died in World War 1, and their daughter died without children, so she willed the house to the Dunedin City Council, with money for its upkeep. When we lived in Dunedin, the house was directly on my route to the gym, and I would often stop and walk in the gardens and visit the greenhouse. I took a tour of the interior once, and it's fabulous. But since the gardens are free, they drew me over and over.

Last week, I finished my writing one morning and noticed it was super windy. The albatrosses out at Taiaroa Head love the wind, so I suggested to Dave that we pack a lunch and head out to try to see albatrosses. The 45 minute drive out the Otago Peninsula is gorgeous. I didn't take any pictures on the way out except for one right below the World War 1 monument. I wrote an entire post on the view from that monument some years ago, which you can access here to get an idea of the views from the Peninsula. 

I'll also give you Dave's painting of the monument, one of his masterpieces. The little lump of land in the far distance to the right of the harbor mouth (to the left of a bigger lump) is Taiaroa Head.

Taiaroa Head is at the end of the Otago Peninsula, the only non-remote-island nesting place of albatrosses. I wrote at length about the albatrosses in my post a couple of weeks ago about the view from Mount Cargill. Last week, when we got out to Taiaroa Head, there was no wind and it was quite warm. Definitely no albatrosses. We had never been out there in November, and we were quite surprised by the hundreds of red-billed gulls who were nesting there. Above the nests, dozens of seagulls flew around and called. It was amazingly noisy. On my way into the Royal Albatross Centre to use the toilet, I zoomed right in on the nests and got to see a baby seagull. 

I went into the centre, used the toilet and poked around in the shop, and went back outside after perhaps 15 minutes. The wind had blown in, the temperature had dropped many degrees, and enormous raindrops were falling. I made my way to the car and got there before the heavens opened, the rain poured down, and the wind roared so hard that the car rocked and rolled in the wind. I strained my eyes to the sky through the raindrops on the car windows -- surely the albatrosses would start flying -- but no. Dave joined me in the car and we found ourselves fascinated by the behavior of the seagulls in the wind. Only a few were now flying, and they struggled to land. Often one would approach the ground, and a gust of wind would pick it up again. 

Below is an overview of the three seagull nesting areas, one in the foreground spread horizontally over a long mound of grasses, and two on the hillside in the background, one just right of center and the other higher up the hill to the right. (On my laptop, I can double click on the photo and it enlarges and gets clearer, so the little white spots, seagulls, are visible.) The Royal Albatross Centre is to the left outside the photo. That building at the top of the hill is the albatross viewing area, for which you have to buy a ticket. From there you can see the albatross nests on the hillside behind the viewing area. On most nice windy days, there's no need to pay for a ticket because the albatrosses fly overhead, visible from the parking area.

The albatrosses never did appear, but we were amply entertained by the seagulls. The rain poured down for about 15 minutes, but the wind continued after the rain stopped, probably the same wind we had experienced in Dunedin 2 hours earlier. Here are two videos of the seagulls taken after the rain stopped. The second one moves up the hill to show the power and beauty of the wind in the grasses.