Dunedin — 11 February 2001

We slept late again, hooray! While waiting for Sue, Jen & I played a match of badminton with Ruiaridh (who "won it for Scotland"). Sue collected us and took us to St. Martin Island, going over several hills that provided spectacular views of the shoreline. Douglas Black met us at the aquarium dock and took us over to the island. Once ashore, we met Douglas's wife Kathy and learned a bit about the island's history. (Known before the 1920s as Quarantine Island, it has a small cemetery of immigrants who died at its hospital.) We walked around the grounds for a while before scaling the hill to check on Rosie and Sundance (Sue's donkeys). We left the donkeys to head down to the cemetery — though we soon realized that Rosie and Sundance were following us (albeit very slowly). We headed to a teepee — yes, a teepee — that had been erected for spiritual retreats, and the donkeys poked their heads in the flap to have a look around. They would have followed us to lunch (and likely shared in it) had we not put a fence between us and them. Donkeys behind us, we had a lovely picnic lunch overlooking the bay. After lunch, we crossed through the fields (did I mention the fields were saturated with sheep?) to get to the reforested bush project. Great stuff! They are planning to reintroduce some riflemen to the island. While investigating the project, we saw two lizards.

After saying our farewells to Douglas and Kathy, we went to Hendrick's property. There, we tramped through the bush, cut down tree restraints and duct tape, and cleaned out old nests from rifleman boxes so that they will be used again. While cleaning the boxes, we saw a male rifleman and had quite the chatty encounter with a fantail who was VERY interested in the insects stirred up by our movement. We wandered back to Hendrick's house. He wasn't home, but we did spot a jewelled gecko in a bush in his side garden.

Returning to the Heath household, everyone under the age of 20 seemed to be in a bit of a funk. Ruiaridh smashed his hand, and Kate scored a time out.