After a morning walk on the beach where we spot some more seals on the other side, it’s a short drive to a place called “The Nuggets”, that gets the kids attention! This whole area is known as “The Catlins” which of course we rename “The Caitlins!”
Purakaunui Beach
The view from the point is pretty spectacular and again fortunately we have a pretty good day for it.
The Nuggets 
The Caitlins!
We stop for a break in the town of Balclutha and get reminded how cold it is as the pond in the local park is frozen, and the duck are walking on it. It’s a bit unusual, but there are all these aviaries in the park fill with birds.
One cold pond!
An amazing view of Dunedin as we come over the hill into town. A brief stop and a visit to the amazing old Railway station. We loosely planned on doing a tour of the Cadbury Factory, but it seems closed. We think about staying here the night, and I know Justine would love to hit the bookshops here, but there is not much else around so we keep driving.
There is a place up the road called Shag Point, you are meant to be able to see Penguins here from time to time, so we take a detour and take a look. The place is not that well signposted so we’re not really 100% where to go or what to look for so we just wander around. In the end we don’t see any Penguins (not late enough in the day?), but come across these seals, dozens of them, sleeping on the grass hills. They look like fur seals and most of them seem like large babies but we can see some larger Mums and Dads down by the water on the beaches, the babies must be up here for more protection. We get up pretty close, maybe a few meters, they are pretty pungent so I’m not sure you’d want to get any closer anyway!
Down Wind Buddy 
As we didn’t see any Penguins we stop at the next town of Omaru, they have a penguin attraction, similar to Philip Is I’d suggest. So all very commercial and overly expensive, but we go anyway.
We stay at a fairly basic caravan park on the foreshore of the harbour. From here we can walk to the Penguin exhibition at dusk. On the way over we see this old wharf, it’s only as we get closer we see it is covered in sea birds, there must be thousands of them, that and their bird poop too!
The penguin parade is nice enough, it was a bit hard to see them in the low light. I’m sure the kids enjoyed it. There’s been this strong fishy smell about, and halfway though we notice this large fur seal not far from where we’re sitting, now we know where the smell is coming from…..It’s fresh all right!
A cold walk back to the van park, and we order pizzas for dinner.