ADVERTISING FEATURE | DUNEDIN NZ WILD AT HEART Albatrosses and sea lions, little blue penguins and takahē live next door to humans in Dunedin, a city perched on a knot of land on the Otago coastline. THERE IS ONLY one place in the world where albatrosses nest on the mainland, and it’s no coincidence that it’s a fort. The terraces that were once part of a pā site at Taiaroa Head provide ideal platforms for albatross nests, and the windy, exposed promontory that affords a six-inch gun a view of the sea to ward off a Russian invasion makes a perfect airstrip for incoming adult birds. This season, there are 28 chicks in the colony, with 56 adults coming in to feed them at any one time. The chicks are sitting on their nests, dotted white across the headland. I walk up to the viewing area and peer through binoculars at their beautiful bulk and serious-looking expressions. Rangers walk among them, picking the chicks up and Little blue penguins, or One male was recorded flying from New penguins, closely avoid a bite, and wonder at At Orokonui Ecosanctuary, longtime weighing them as they go. kororā, come ashore en Zealand to Chile in just 16 days. how much care, money, and attention is volunteer and guide Alyth Grant keeps up a Royal albatrosses live at sea for four to masse by night to breed. Below the head, on the small curve of lavished on these birds, and how much of steady stream of information: there are A new programme at seven years in their young lives, and the Blue Penguins Pukekura sand called Pilot’s Beach, little blue penguin the work we do for them is about trying to victories, and there are the disappointments. chicks’ first flight will be after the parents called Tautoko Kaitiaki expert Hiltrun Ratz has cleared weeds, built ensure they don’t notice we’re doing it. The sanctuary lost its saddlebacks after a have begun to starve them a little to get allows visitors to spend penguin boxes and created a safe place I’m noticing that the Dunedinites working stoat somehow got in and three stoat dogs them out of the house. They will stretch, get a day volunteering with where the public can view her 500 penguins for its native species are warm, open, failed to locate her. She was caught exiting up, walk over to the edge, and jump off the penguins, monitoring but not interfere with them. She monitors informed, interesting, and so committed to her burrow, her mouth holding one of her mainland to find food, the first and last time birds and their them as they go about their lives—out at the deep south. As they talk about the kits. A close call. They also lost Mr Roto, a until they return to breed. In their years at environment. At the dawn to fish, in during the evening to sleep. world around them, there’s a joyful, grateful friendly kākā who died when he was Royal Albatross Centre, sea they will circle Antarctica on the visitors can view the “Taiaroa Head was once a fortification thread to their words, and they seem searching for huhu grubs and a tree stump prevailing westerlies—a carousel of colony from a purpose- against Russia, and now it’s against pests,” inextricably connected to the landscapes fell on him. opportunity that will bring them home again. built observatory. she says. I scan some microchipped they live and work in. But the calls of kākā, bellbirds, and tūī are ADVERTISING FEATURE | DUNEDIN NZ raucous, and I see riflemen, tomtits, Night-sky tours on the Otago Peninsula brown creepers, and kererū and South put some distance between stargazers Island robin, which look like little boiled and city lights. Below, Karitāne Māori Tours’s waka trip takes visitors onto the potatoes with jackets on, propped up on Waikouaiti River with guides from Kāti matchsticks. I’m treated to my first sight Huirapa ki Puketeraki. Back in the city, of takahē, their plump bodies like bollards historic architecture sits side by side with a against the strong wind. burgeoning street-art scene. The night is cloudy, but Kylie Ruwhiu- Karawana drives me away from the city in her Horizon Tours van and out onto the slump of the Otago Peninsula, the city twinkling behind us. Once over the ridge, the moon appears low, full, and orange in the eastern sky, a moonrise like a sunrise. We turn slowly down the hillside, past a tall 19th-century lime kiln, past old drystone walls, along a road that seems nearly at one with the sea, Hoopers Inlet flanked by the perfect outline of Harbour Cone. We stop at a private patch of farmland. The moon lights the clouds up grey. It isn’t the best conditions for southern stargazing, but I gaze up for the next two hours while Kylie tells me about tātai arorangi, Māori astronomy, and te ao marama, the world of light, and she places the stars into such an expansive framework that by the time I return to the city I felt like something had shifted, as though I’d come adrift from mainland New Zealand, shooting up into the sky and back in time all at once. The following afternoon I’m in a handcrafted double-hulled sailing waka, digging my paddle into the waters of the Waikouaiti River in Kāritane, listening to Jesse-James Pickery and Thomas to sea. We’ve brought three akeake with us, river, the first place in Otago to be characterisation persists: Dunedin’s shabby revitalised Warehouse Precinct, are MacFarlane point out the history and and we find three spots to plant them: it’s registered as wāhi tapu by the New Zealand glamour is like nowhere else. SEE MORE AT looming monuments to a time of immense features of the land part of Karitāne Māori Historic Places Trust. Ian Conrich writes that New Zealand economic confidence and cultural around me, tell me about Tours’s work to It is also the site of the pā of Te Wera. Gothic “is found in landscapes suffused with OTAGO MUSEUM aspiration. Today, this is topped off with the flooding of the river, ON OUR RETURN revegetate the peninsula. Here, a small spring, Te Puna Wai a te Wera, dark and perilous beauty; we meet good winter coats and new tech companies A new exhibition at Otago the quirks of the wildlife, TO THE WAKA, WE The company is run by helped the peninsula’s people outlast a siege individuals whose suburban masks threaten Museum, Challenging and recent arrivals who can’t believe their the hotel that used to sit NEARLY STUMBLE local iwi Kāti Huirapa ki after a feud between cousins Taoka and Te to slip and reveal a haunted interior; we see the Deep, looks into the luck. on the sandspit Puketeraki, and has a Wera. (A private bay to launch waka to how uneasy histories tear through the fabric technological innovations But mostly, the word that keeps a Ohinepouwera, the wars UPON A SEA LION 200-year planting plan catch the plentiful seafood had also helped.) of the present and fracture our fragile social that have made deep- metronomic beat in my thoughts for the that had once been BASKING ON in place. We’re standing on the sandspit where Te boundaries. Our Gothic tradition hints at sea exploration possible, four days I spend in Dunedin is wild. It fought here. THE SAND; WE’D “Now you have to Wera’s challenger staged his siege in the inner demons and buried anxieties that are featuring items from seems like you could have a good life down On the way back name it in Māori,” says 18th century. Only a few hundred years sensed obliquely rather than seen in plain director James Cameron’s here at the edge of the world; a life of MISTAKEN HIM FOR expeditions and films. Also down the river, I drag a Pickery, and I stumble an ago, but so much change in between. sight”. curiosity and intrigue, a life of caring about A DRIFTWOOD LOG. at the museum, the Tūhura toe in the water and try inept “Um… ‘Te rakau o On our return to the waka, we nearly Dunedin’s look and feel evokes the urban Science Centre includes what is important to you. to get the hang of the te waka?’” He laughs. stumble upon a sea lion basking on the sand; Gothic—not just the imposing buildings, but a butterfly house, tropical It’s a city big enough to be interesting, sail while the boys “‘The tree of the boat’. we’d mistaken him for a driftwood log. also the long winter nights, the chill, the forest, and a slide shaped small enough to care, and south enough to paddle, and we pull the waka up on the Okay. You’ll be able to come back and find It’s silly to think you can generalise about mist, the empty beaches, the crumbling old like DNA’s double helix. be able to raise an eyebrow at the rest of beach at the Karitāne sandspit, where the it when it’s grown.” a place and its people, but one word that’s cemeteries, isolated communities, a the country, shrug into its coat collar, turn locals have recently dragged driftwood to He points out an old whaling station, and repeated a lot when it comes to Dunedin is landscape that seems embued with history. its back, and go out and do its own thing.