Some Loons and a Few Odd Little Birds

Here I go again in an attempt to out do my imaginary Uncle Harry in the boredom stakes.
We stopped at the Bay of Islands with the girls. Unlike last time it was not blowing a gale, but the weather was cold and it rained intermittently. But the weather did not deter some loony locals. In the circle in this photo (number one daughter in the corner by the way)...
are these guys, surfing far off this inhospitable coast.Every now and then surfers are drowned somewhere on this coast, when the conditions change suddenly on a rugged coastline they can easily be trapped against sheer cliff faces. When you see them in places like this you can see why.

To continue boring you, another shot of The Grotto.
And London Bridge at low tide in calmer seas.
I took this photo of the cliffs facing away from London Bridge the previous time we were there. I noticed footprints in the sand at the base of the cliff at the time and wondered how anyone could have climbed down there.
Two weeks later and there were still footprints at the bottom of the cliff, lots of them.
So I had a closer look. In the vegetation covered bank at the base of the cliff are dozens of burrows.
Then it went click, Fairy Penguins live along this coast. During daylight hours they fish out at sea, then at night they come ashore to rest in burrows where they raise their chicks.
All these prints are the work of cute little fairy penguins.

This picture is from Wikimedia Commons

Next along to Loch Ard Gorge
Where there are these interesting but rather ugly stalactites.
Out at the point beyond the gorge you can see where the Loch Ard foundered. The formation with the arch through it is Muttonbird Island. The Loch Ard was wrecked on the shelf at the base of the cliffs in the extreme left of this picture. Somehow the two survivors made it past these cliffs, through this gap, to land on this beach.

From here we continued on to the Twelve Apostles. These nifty little helicopters run tourists past the Apostles. We decided not to go last time because it was really windy, and this time because it was raining.
So we made do with looking from ground level

Here they are again from a different angle to last time and in very different light.
We had hoped to go on to Cape Otway, which we have not made it to on either of our previous trips, but the rain continued to get heavier so we decided to head for home.

Having made Uncle Harry proud by boring you all to tears, that is all for a while from the South West Coast.

Of course we still have to head down that way to see Cape Otway, maybe in summer before the high season. So Uncle harry could yet ride again!

Next: I cast an eye over my novel.