New Zealand - Day 7 - The Catlins and the blowhole of death

It hammered it down all night, and the morning wasn’t too much better so we took our time getting ready to leave as the place was dead and they didn’t really mind when we rolled out. We decided our next port of call would be Curio Bay  - about an hour further around the coast, which had another penguin viewing beach as well as a cool sounding camping spot right on the beach.

By the time we’d packed up and hit the road, the weather wasn’t looking too bad so we decided to go for what we thought would be a quick detour on the way to see ‘Jack’s Blowhole’ – an underground cave leading out to sea which had collapsed about 200 metres inland and apparently worth the visit. The LP reckoned it’d be closed during lambing season (which we were smack bang in the middle of), but as we approached and saw a few signs for it (homemade ones on manky wood, painted in childlike scribbles BLOWHOLE à) and none of them had the word closed so we ventured on.

And on, and on…. and further on. From the highway, it was 8-10km until we hit a dirt road, then that continued for about another 10km until we came to a smaller dirt road – another 5km of this (none of which had been indicated, aside from the arrowed signs which we speculated were merely luring unknowing tourists to their doom in a barn somewhere) and we hit Jack’s Bay – and the parking area for the Blowhole walk. Initially we were pleased, but then the walking began – because of all the rain it was pretty muddy, and the fenced off pathway lead right through fields of sheep. This would have been fine, except three lambs had broken through and didn’t like the look of us much so started panicking – bleeting with fear and trying to mash their way back through to safety. Two made it, but the third was a little chubby and couldn’t jump quite right so just started sprinting around in a daze making a noise that would only interest Hannibal Lecter.

Eventually we made it through sheep country, and then the climb began. By this point, the sun was out and it was now far too warm for what we were wearing so we sweatily trudged up a steep, rocky, slippery hill for 10-15 minutes before reaching the top. Then we walked down another hill and around a couple of corners (fortunately with amazing, but precarious views below) for another 10 minutes or so before we eventually saw a sign indicating we had bloody made it – at last!

Views from the top of the sheep paddock

Giddy with excitement/exhaustion we skipped towards the viewing platform which was on the other side of the hole. And it was a big old hole! We had been expecting something the size of a large well or a hot tub – when in reality blowhole was a good Olympic sized swimming pool across, and dropped down even further giving a pretty impressive view. Unfortunately – the view was somewhat tarnished by what immediately preceded reaching said viewing platform…

Now, dear readers, you may think that three or four paragraphs was a lot to devote to the ridiculously long walking track and surprisingly epic drive to the Jack’s Blowhole – but setting the scene is important. As we initially approached the viewing area – you could go left or right around the hole. As it turned out – this was a key decision, which, had we chosen left would have resulted in merely a sentence and a photo of said blowhole.

Unfortunately for us – but mainly for Lisa, we picked right. As we rounded the corner and saw the platform, the terrain changed to rather a slope heading downhill but was still covered in long grass – which in turn was covering some particularly soft mud. Lisa slipped once and almost toppled over and I joked that I didn’t want her to slide into the blowhole as it’d completely ruin my day trying to fish her out.

Two steps later – she slipped again, only this time both legs flew out from under her and she went down, hard on her right hand side – her right elbow and shoulder absorbing the majority of the impact. I was following closely behind – typically this was one of only a couple of spots we weren’t holding hands or had our arms linked for balance – but too far behind to grab her. Immediately it was clear this wasn’t just another amusing slip down a hill and she was in a whole world of pain. At first I was afraid she had dislocated it and visions of air ambulances flooded my mind – given how far we were from the van, or even a hospital (Invercargill was the closest – about 2 hours drive away). Confident it wasn’t dislocated, but unsure of the damage I was concerned and Lisa was in agony.

Jack's fucking blowhole

It was ten minutes before I could help her to her feet – and another ten before we could start walking back to the van for a substantial amount of medication and a cup of sweet tea. Then came the walk back – it was rough, and took about 45 minutes. The step ladder-esque bridges over the fences were particularly hard to traverse. Without a doubt if we’d been back in Brisbane – or in a built up town any regular person would have called for an ambulance, but it just wasn’t an option & Cooksey was a right trooper (as I kept telling her, much to her annoyance as laughter wasn’t the best medicine at that particular moment in time).

Fortunately the sheep had moved on by the time we made it back to the start of the track and the van. After a cuppa and some hardcore painkillers I had leftover from my broken collarbone (we pretty much have an entire pharmacy with us fortunately), we slowly made our way to Curio Bay – about three and a half hours after going for a ‘quick look’ at Jack’s fucking Blowhole.

We booked in for one night at the holiday park with the intention of resting Lisa up in the hope it was just a badly strained tendon or ligament in the shoulder – and had picked up an ice pack en route from a pharmacy. The park was really nice for the van – really leafy individual spots sheltered from your neighbours and right by the sea. We arrived just in time to go penguin spotting – but unfortunately the beach was only accessible by a huge staircase (about 150 steps) – and the penguin landing zone was another 150 metres down the rocky beach, so I just went down alone armed with the camera.

I was only down there for about 5 minutes when a couple of the Yellow Eyed Penguins we’d seen from afar the night before came scamping ashore – as soon as they had I picked a rock at random which was raised a couple of metres above the rest and sat and watched. It was pretty amazing – they waddle out, shake off the water and then stand facing the sun for a couple of minutes basking in it before hopping on and repeating the process 20 metres further on.

Little bit of sun baking before returning home!

As it turned out – my rock was directly in the middle of their route to the burrows so they came straight past and even posed for a few pics on the way! I watched the two go past and another was coming ashore, but the sun was almost down so I hopped off and headed back to Lisa at the top of the steps. Unfortunately there was one guy there with a telephoto lens literally chasing the fresh penguin around for the ‘perfect’ shot – to the point where it kept coming ashore, seeing him and then going back into the sea. Apparently if they do this too many times, they end up either digesting the food they are bringing ashore – or don’t come in at all so it got us both quite angry – I wished we hadn’t walked up there from the caravan park so I could’ve left a note informing him of my opinions (I wont put these in writing as I know the family is reading this too) – but as we were leaving he seemed to had given up, sunset had saved the penguin fortunately.

We retired to the van for some food and more painkillers, but Lisa was still in a pretty bad way so we were already planning our trip to Invercargill in the morning to get the shoulder checked out.

Big jump for a little penguin...