It should be noted that, while “the largest food market in the Southern Hemisphere” sounds impressive, it is, in fact, about half the size of the farmer’s market in Bloomington, Indiana. 

It’s a lovely little market. It unfolds in layers of kale green and beetroot burgundy, pumpkin orange and heirloom tomatoe red next to the train station, at the end of Stuart Street, just a few blocks down from the Octagon, every Saturday morning. We learned about it from the cheese monger we stopped at, day before yesterday.

Of course we bought a loaf of hearty brown bread, loaded with seeds in the crust, a tub of cheese curd from our flamboyant friend who recognized us from our visit, and a fresh bunch of rocket that reminded me of my lettuce growing friend in Indiana.

Perhaps a cavernous Anglican cathedral, echoing with pipe organ music is not the first place to seek out on day eight of a migraine, but I couldn’t resist. We haven’t sat in a really good cathedral in many months and to watch the tiny old woman tucked into the heart of her instrument and feel the reverberation of the pipes in our bones was to have the rest of the world dissolve into sound.

It was a day of explorations: from the knitting store on Stuart Street to the very tip of the Otago Peninsula, where the Northern Albatross nest. We added the albatross, the rarest species of sea lion in the world and a blue penguin to our list of creatures seen in the wild. We also saw loads more fur seals, which we still find quite exciting!

We learned more than we wanted to about long line fishing (did you know the lines are sometimes as much as 100 km long??) and how 300,000 albatross a year die on the end of a hook. It’s an unsustainable loss and albatross populations worldwide are plummeting as a result. The solutions are simple and inexpensive, but getting them implemented is the hard part. As we watched a giant bird whirl overhead on a sea breeze I wondered if my great grandchildren will ever see one. I hope so.

Can you spot the penguin? Blue Penguins are the smallest species of penguin!