Day 23. Oamaru. Penguin town.

Not a lot to say about Oamaru. If it wasn't for the two colonies of Penguins that come ashore each evening I suspect the town wouldn't see many visitors. One thing we did notice is that a lot of the streets are named after UK rivers; so there's Ribble St, Thames St, Severn St and so on.

The coolest of these, of course, is Tyne Street. Ok, 'cool' might be overstating things, but it is the thoroughfare where all the museums and stuff are, so I can't help thinking one of the town's founding fathers must have been a domineering, loudmouth geordie. A theory backed up by the absence of any Wear or Tees Streets.

Oh, and the Penguins rocked.

It was a real thrill to stand within 10 yards of the funny fella's as they scampered from the beach to their nesting burrows beneath the cliffs. It's mating season, so as well as the enjoying the visual spectacle, we were treated to the aural delight of 200 males squawking their little beaks off in order to attract a lady (the bigger the squawk, the bigger the stud apparantly).

Just before the action got going some conservation type bloke imparted a few penguin facts and figures to impress our
friends with.

Did you know:

i) The Blue Penguin will swim over 50 Kilometres a day looking for grub.
ii) They can hold their breath for over 2 minutes and dive to 60 metres.
iii) Sometimes they don't come ashore for 7 days, bobbing on the ocean surface while they catch up on their kip.
iv) Only 2% of a Penguin chocolate biscuit is made from penguin meat. The rest is cocoa solids, tranfatty acids and whey.