2022 Tiritiri Matangi Holiday - Day 2

It’s a wonderful feeling to wake up on Tiritiri Matangi, go outside and to hear the dawn chorus including the haunting kokako’s and tui’s while having breakfast.

Tuesday is the day that no ferry comes to Tiri, so we have an entire island to ourselves plus two 2 DOC volunteers and 2 Tiri guides who we never really saw – so it really was like island was all ours!

Like last time we stayed at Tiri, I have arranged for the boys to the daily clean and water refill of the bird troughs which are located around the lighthouse and along the wattle track. This does take several hours but the boys absolutely love doing their bit to help the bird’s on Tiri.

Just after 8am Chippy the DOC Ranger went through the water trough process with us but he was super brilliant as he also showed us the small weather station box which records the temp stats from the day before and then he let us inside the Fog Horn building.

Luke washing out a bird trough on the wattle track

And Robin applying the cleaning solution

In the past this large fog horn run was run via a large diesel engine. The system actually still works but is only used for historical reenactment purposes. It was great that Chippy let us into the building where the diesel engines, large compressed air tank and fog horn are located. I have never been into this room before and I do enjoy my history. I understand that the fog horn itself is very loud when run.

Afterwards Robin took me to the peninsula located just past the lighthouse (where most people never go) so we could look back and try and see an old historic track used before the fog horn was installed, this was a great idea of Robin’s and it’s great spending time with him but we couldn’t really see much as everything is now overgrown.

Robin and I heading back to the lighthouse after looking for the old track.

After lunch at the bunkhouse we headed back down to beach with Luke and I taking the direct route so Julianne and Robin could take a longer route so he could do some of the advanced kids’ Kiwi Ranger activities in the bush.

While Luke was playing on the beach I went to the end of the wharf. I have always wanted to jump off the wharf, but have never done so and it was low tide so it not only was the drop to the water at the highest point but the water level does get very low with over half the beach under the wharf exposed. I was a bit nervous about jumping directly into an unknown depth so I went down the stairs and jumped into water there and swum around the wharf. Then a large boat turned up with a young family who swam out to the wharf and started jumping of it. If they could do it, so could I. When I was a kid I loved jumping off things into the water and now I can add the tiri wharf to my list. I spent a bit of time jumping of the wharf while waiting for Julianne and Robin to join us. Luke was fine on the beach collecting sea glass with Chippy the DOC ranger who had turned up.

We then headed down to Hobbs beach so Luke could go for a swim at a sandy beach, and play his new game of practicing floating. For the first time ever he went from floating with my support to being able to stand back up on his own. It was so precious watching his young face glow with excitement as he gets more confident and better at his floating. Also being in the sea he started floating as wave swells lifted him up and down for the first time, very exciting for him.

Unfortunately while we were playing in the water Julianne fell onto a rock and cut her foot, a decent long cut. She had to hobble back to the bunk house so I could clean it out. Robin also had a sore foot for a reason we couldn’t work out, as such only Luke and I went out that night to try and spot kiwi, but it was not a successful walk. We only walked up and down the road for around 20 minutes.

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2022 Tiritiri Matangi Holiday - Day 2