Newsletter  November 07

Dear All,

Summer is drawing to a close if you believe the sales marketing people and I haven’t even started diving out at the Poor Knights yet. Particularly annoying since it has been a cracker season out there with very clear blue water.

I have been far from idle though. Only a week after I arrived back from the tropics after an uneventful passage of motoring into light headwinds for ten days, I was off to Akaroa Harbour on the Banks Peninsula to visit some old friends, the hectors dolphins. I might have to make this visit an annual feature until I have a crisp portrait of one of those delightful creatures. Christmas and New Year I spent in Kangaroo Island looking for leafy sea dragon with John Thislton. They have been on my list ever since I first saw a picture of them and no image can replace the wonder you feel when you see them in real life ghosting over the kelp. Sadly their numbers where down and it is to be hoped that this is a seasonal problem. K.I. diving is very similar to northern New Zealand diving except for those fancy dragons that we don’t have here. Incidentally the Neptune Islands where I photographed great white sharks some eight years ago are only 50 miles from K.I. . Adds a little excitement to the diving as well. The Australian sea lions where an unexpected bonus. They are pure pleasure to photograph because they truly model for you. Just swim past one sitting on a rock and he’ll slip in and play with you like in a Disney movie.

Pete and Darin came over from Ozzy for a week after Christmas and we had a jolly good time as always with these two. We went out to the Knights courtesy of Dive Tutakaka on a perfect day (pun intended) and my heart was aching with the beauty of the place. Darin and I went for a snorkel in togs only and I vowed to honour the privilege of living near this special place more in the future and spend extendet time there again. However I feel the spirit of the Poor Knights is being defiled a bit during school holidays and game fishing season when it becomes just another diversion for largely insensitive people. Maybe I am becoming a cranky old fart living in the ‘good old days’?

Nora’s heart was set on getting to know Steward Island after I have raved about it on my previous visits, so we decided to go bushwalking there for a couple of weeks with the loose goal of shooting a Kiwi. Steward Island is the only place where they are out during the daytime and sightings are not too rare. True to it’s reputation the Island presented itself stormy, rainy and muddy while the summer was in it’s most glorious bloom in Northland. However, we were rewarded with two Kiwi sightings. On one occasion I was laying flat on the ground aiming my 300mm lens at the bird when he ran straight up to me, stopped an inch before the barrel and proceeded to run over me – literally. Not many New Zealanders have seen a Kiwi in the wild. Fewer still have been run over by one. The resulting images are not worth keeping but the memory of it is priceless and that my dear friends is what it really is all about.

On that note I promise to keep at least a six monthly update of this page going.

Before I go however I would like to mention that I am planning to extend the accommodation on the good ship NEXUS. This will allow me to take cost sharing crew with me on future expeditions. So any interested parties who think they can handle adventure with a capital A, please send me an email expression of interest.

Ciao for now,

Tobi