THE JOURNEY BEGINS

Its 12.30 am and its cold, there is a southerly blowing, and in two hours at 2.30am we will be off on the trip to our muttonbird island Just out from pegasus to the south east of stewart Island. The son and I are travelling on our cousins boat - the Awesome (spelt with an A) . We will be travelling west - about - in short that means the long way. Past Codfish. past Doughboy and Flowercast.

Then we get a bit of a treat. The  Stewart Island Helicopter piloted by Jason Wright will take us from the Big South Cape, and fly over Flowercast down Pegasus and land on the top of our island, which is pretty much half way between South Cape and Noble Island on the map.
Then the Awesome will arrive at the island a few hours later and the helicopter will return to Bluff to pick up ma and pa and drop them off and load our gear onto Ernest  island.  Which is not the Ernest Island outside Doughboy.

Then the fun begins.

This year the birds are big and plentiful.

Yum.

WRONG OYSTERS!

We want to line up the picture editor at TV3 and chuck kinas at him ! The 6pm bulletin had a story on todays Bluff oyster harvest but they had file footage of PACIFIC oysters.. very bad. And to top it all off Dave Gooseneck got the name of one of the oyster boat skippers Stephen Hawke wrong - He called him Hawkins...

The Hawke will get you..... he is a legend - well is old man is and Stephen is the son of a legend...

As for the best oyster recipe - Easy - just naked - no prissy wee dribbles of lemon .. just naked with maybe a half turn of black pepper.. And they should be so fresh that they shiver....

These are the real Bluff oysters.... there are no substitutes..... apart from Southern Glory oysters which are really just Bluff oysters from a private school....