Taupo - Auckland (Full Circle)

It's been a few days since the last post (almost two weeks - eek!). There's a good reason for this - we've been on a deserted island without recourse to the civilising power of the internet. This is actually true. More on that story later, first how we got to Auckland in the first place...

We stopped in a wee placey called Cambridge. The long and short of Cambridge, NZ is that they breed race horses nearby and that's about it. However, Cambridge is the location of a couple of night's free accommodation courtesy of (wait for it), our sister-in-law's godmother's daughter. Any free accommodation is welcomed by us (our new mantra is "cheap is good, free is best!") wholeheartedly, so we met up with Lizz at the local library - once we'd told her where it was!

Lizz and Chris were very nice to put us up for a couple of nights. We had a great time with them watching telly, chilling out and eating curry - Chris even took me down the local club to play poker (at which it turns out I am merely mediocre...). Anyway, a nice relaxing time was had by all and we reluctantly boarded the bus back to Auckland.

So, back to deserted islands. We wanted to do a stint of volunteering in New Zealand - similar to our Port Macquarie experience in Australia. We settled on a wee island in the Hauraki Gulf called Tiri Tiri Matangi. On Tiri, they have managed to get rid of all the introduced pests that were brought over by us Europeans (sorry...) like rats, stoats, hedgehogs, ferrets, etc and restore the habitat to something similar to what it was like before the mammalian invasion. New Zealand's wildlife all evolved without mammals as predators (the only native NZ mammal is a bat) so they don't survive when faced with such harsh predation. Some NZ natives (like the unfortunate Kakapo) are now so critically endangered that they only survive on offshore islands. There are now only 86 Kakapo that they know of anywhere in the world.


There aren't any Kakapo on Tiri, but there are a few other birds that are almost as rare: Saddlebacks, Stitchbirds, Bellbirds, Takahe, Brown Teal, Kokako and Little Spotted Kiwi are some of the species that call Tiri home. Somewhere in this pic (above) is a Saddleback. They are quite rare, but are all over the place on Tiri.While we were there, we helped with the nectar feeders for Tui, Bellbirds and Stitchbirds, helped clear tracks, clean up the gift shop and provide clean water for all the birds. We also got our evenings spare to go looking for the nocturnal creatures of New Zealand - such as Kiwis and the ancient Tuatara. We did manage to corner a few kiwis on our midnight trips but were unable to persuade them to stand still for snaps. This beastie is a Takahe. He was just interested in eating and was easy to photograph.


Altogether we had a great time on Tiri and met a large number of very special people. If only we could have stayed longer...