Friday 9 October A quiet night in Ross - just three of us at Pete’s POP. We packed up fairly early and headed down into Ross itself. Spent a pleasant morning wandering & exploring in the spring sunshine. The blossoms in town were glorious against the blue spring skies and while Louis was dumping our overnight grey water, I tootled over to check out St Patrick’s Catholic Church - built in 1866 to service the spiritual needs of the largely Irish Catholic miners who flocked to

Thursday 8 October Lulled by the crashing of the waves, we slept well in our cosy Banjo. I popped out to the beach just before 8am, met a cheeky weka, marvelled at the snowy Southern Alps and watched the waves. Wow! 🤩 A tārapuka, black billed gull, flew down and landed by the weka - who rushed at it, squawking and all puffed up - very territorial! Wish I had been quick enough to record that encounter. An hour or so later we walked out along the gorsey dunes behind the beach

Wednesday 7 October Our last morning in Ōkārito and we decided to try the trig walk - even though the skies were grey & unappealing. However we met a Dutch couple coming in off the beach who’d been photographing a kōtuku, a white heron out there. Louis continued on up to the trig but I diverted down to the sands with long lens in hand… ever hopeful! And there he was, not far from the campground, just wading in a stream caused by the incoming tide - absolutely stunning. Sadly