Childrens Bay and Onawe Peninsula

3 January 2021

Only four were ready to begin their day-tripping this early in the New Year. Leader and driver was Jill Fenner. She had done the Childrens Bay walk before so knew to park near the boaties’ slipway to start our easy clockwise circuit. We passed the series of animals that makes this walk so popular and even got past the crocodile unscathed, as we ignored the dictum to ‘never smile at a…’ The giraffes look a bit out of place in grassland though I’m told they do eat grass sometimes. The rhino is a full-sized magnificent metal beast with its horn pointing us up the hill towards Moa Point. We got to a bench at a high point above Lushington Bay for morning tea and didn’t see the point in looking for moas because that would have taken us back towards the car. Instead, we walked to Takamatua to eat lunch in the shade, near the jetty. The old Takamatua Road took us back to a grassy track and the rhino, then back on familiar tracks to the car.

With much of the afternoon in reserve Jill gave us a bonus walk. Onawe Flat Road goes from Duvauchelle to a car-park halfway along Onawe Peninsula, so we did the short walk to the high-point then back the same way. The weathered trachyte rock at the narrow waist of the peninsula is truly impressive and a fair bit older than the Lyttelton volcanics at 8 -10 million years.

We were: Jill Fenner (leader), Joy Schroeder, Tanya Jacobson, Kerry Moore. (KM)