Fortrose to Curio Bay - The Catlins

The Catlins is a beautiful part of the country. Curio Bay is an extroadinary fossilized forest. You can see tree stumps and fallen trees, even the grain of the wood and they are apparently 180 million years old. There are also fascinating layers of rock in the cliffs that look as if they have been carefully built up layer by layer which I suppose they have been in a sense. In the evening Yellow Eyed Penguins return from the ocean to feed their chicks who make lots of noise in the bush up from the beach. They are really cool but you have to keep a good distance so no photos unless you have a big lens. The other side of the headland is Porpoise Bay which has dolphins in the summer pretty much every day. Still a bit early in the summer so there were only a couple around which I didn`t see, though a couple of large seals swam right up to me for a bit and then headed to the beach were they sunbathed and yawned like a couple of tourists and seemed completely unfazed by the group of poeple who too photos a few metres away. Great campsite, very retro. Big development plans underway, seems a shame.