Kisbee Lodge - Preservation Inlet - Fiordland

Kisbee Lodge - located at the bottom of Fiordland - we spent 3 months there having all sorts of cool adventures. We went diving, fishing, walking, exploring and just hanging out surrounded by mountains and sea.

We walked to the Puysegur Point Lighthouse 7 times and down to Sealers Beach 5 times enjoying playing in the sand dunes and watching the waves crash onto the beach. We loved playing our sand dune game with visiting friends.

We had two amazing displays of Bottlenose Dolphins during our time at Preservation Inlet.

First one up Long Sound where they were riding the bow wave of our small 5m boat and jumping all over the place. Then the next around Kisbee Bay - almost right in front of the lodge! Again they were riding the bow waves and we saw the young calfs up close.

We saw plenty of Little Blue Penguins in the water and seals. We saw a bull seal ripping a large octopus apart like a playful dog ripping a toy apart!

Every week a tourist boat would come in and come and check out Kisbee Lodge, sometimes they would invite us on their boat for lunch or morning tea. They would fill us up on Sprite, chocolate and give Mum and Dad lots of wine. They enjoyed looking at the old historic sites around the lodge that was once an old gold mining town.

We were home schooled Monday to Friday, sometimes if the day was beautiful we would skip school and enjoy the day out on the boat.

Every morning we had to check the possum traps, we set these up around the lodge to try to get rid of the possums but also to make some pocket money. We plucked every possum we caught - we caught 35 in total - around 2 kilograms of fur.

I made sure I checked the rain gauge every day - most days there was something in there! We had close to a 1m of rain while we were at the lodge.

Each night at 8.15pm we had to check in with Mother Meri or Good As Gold Meri, she checks in with all the people in Fiordland. Every time we went out on the boat we would radio her to let her know our intentions.

There is really great diving in Preservation Inlet, you can see lots of Blue Cod, Rass, Moki, Crayfish and Kina. The Kina surround the rocks like ants covering the table. If it had been raining the fresh water layer would be on top and you would have to dive a little deeper to see the creatures.

The crayfish were 6m deep, they hide themselves in little rock caves, hidden away from predators. Dad would try and dive down and grab them from their cave - sometimes if he was quick enough we'd have a crayfish for dinner but sometimes they got away. Luckily the visiting fisherman would also give us humongous crayfish that would be the size of a giants foot. They would often invite us onto their boat so we could watch them pulling up their cray pots with millions of crayfish in them.

Paua grip on to the rocks like cement. I would take a while to get the paua, sometimes I would have to dive down lots of times before I got the paua off the rock. Because the water was so cold I wore 2 wetsuits so a weight belt helped with getting down.

We had 6 weeks of visitors. We had our 2 lots of Grandparents and 3 lots of friends. We would take them to the lighthouse, Spit Island which is a beautiful beach with sand dunes and also Sealers Beach which is a short walk from the Puysegur Lighthouse.

We often walked to Te Oneroa which was the site of another mining town back in 1890. One of our jobs was to check the traps on the way - checking for rats and stoats. On the walk we could see the old house sites and the old mine shaft, we often tried to search for gold in the creeks but didn't find anything!

We experienced a big storm and a had a massive lightning strike which cut all our power. This gave us all a scare as we were outside hunting for koura. Luckily we didn't get struck but it felt very close to us. We then had to use an old generator for power. Then one night the generator caught fire! So me, Charlie and Mahe had to get all the fire extinguishers from the rooms to help put the fire out. The shed was saved but the generator wasn't. So we had a few days without power until someone flew in to fix it all.

A couple of days later it was our time to fly out - Mum and Dad had decided to ask the helicopter to drop us off at Westies Hut so we could spend 6 days walking out along the South Coast Track.

It was sad leaving Kisbee Lodge - I would love to go back there again one day.