Today we drove back into Collingwood ready for our trip out to Farewell Spit. If you look at a map of South Island it is the long spit of land, shaped like a kiwi beak, that sticks out many kilometres into the Tasman Sea at the top of the island. No private cars are allowed on the spit, and walkers can only access the first 4 km, so the Eco bus is the only way to see the spit.
After using the company's wifi to upload Thursday and Friday's blog entries, we set off. Our first stop was back at Farewell Cape, but this time we didn't have to walk up from the carpark.
The bus is based on a 1970s Bedford Lorry, 4WD, specially modified for driving on the sand.
As we left the public car park at the start of the spit we could see more of the dead long finned pilot whales that had beached two days ago. Together with the ones we had seen earlier it made at least 18 who had died. Apparently 198 had beached altogether so the rescuers had done a great job getting so many back into the sea. Our guide believes they beach during an attempt to get away from predators, and during his 30 odd years of driving this tour he has seen many, many beachings by whales in this area.
We saw many examples of the birds that spend time on the spit, including this little piedball stilt (hope I got that right!).
At the start of the spit there is a small area of native bush, including some wild lupins. But this time the lupins were yellow, not blue/purple as we have seen before.
After a stop at Fossil Bay, at the extreme start of the outer beach, we drove some 23 kms along the beach to the Spit lighthouse. Along the way we saw many more birds and some fur seals. Most of the spit is pure sand now since settlers trying to keep animals there burned off much of the native bush. Some areas have been planted with grass to stabilise the dunes, but up by the lighthouse where the three keepers used to live, there is a little microclimate formed under trees that one keeper had managed to get to grow. It is very strange to drive two hours along a beach to find a small oasis at the end!
The spit is 1km wide at high tide, but 8 km wide at low tide. It is also several kms longer at low tide. We drove out further along the spit towards a gannet colony towards the far end. The small dark patch on the left hand side of the bus is the lighthouse 'oasis'.
On the way back we stopped by the one sand dune that visitors are allowed to walk on, and had great fun running up and down the dunes.
As we were nearing Fossil Bay again we startled a group of sea birds.
The whole drive took 6-1/2 hours, and was a unique experience. We had a knowledgable guide who told us all about the spit and the nature around us, interspersed with stories about the local history of the region.
The first European to see the bay was Abel Tasman, who incorrectly interpretated a Moari haka as a friendly sing-a-long, thus accidently agreeing to enter into a battle with the Moari. After they had killed three of his seamen, and eaten one, Abel called the bay Massacre Bay. Later Cook discovered lots of Maori bones in the area and called it Murderous Bay. It then became Coal Bay after the discovery of coal, before finally being known as Golden Bay after gold was discovered in the area.
Back at Collingwood we found the whole town seemed to have closed for the night at 6pm, so we drove on, past Takaka, to Pohura Wharf where we are freedom camping for the night, surrounded by many kiwi campers. The site is a grassy area by a small harbour, and only self contained campers are allowed. The wardens come round every night, and anyone trying to camp in a non self contained campervan gets an instant fine of $200.
Tomorrow we are going to visit the Abel Tasman national park and do some walking.
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