The annual rainfall is approximately....blah blah blah...
Here's some stuff you won't find out on Wikipedia:
· There are approximately 390 humans and 20,000 kiwis residing on the Island.
· The island features about 20km of paved road and over 200km of walking trails.
· Each August the Island hosts a singles ball. So far no lasting relationships have resulted.
· Favourite local foods include roast muttonbird (sooty shearwater chicks), Stewart Island blue cod (especially the gonads), paua, whitebait, venison, crayfish, groper, mussels, oysters,
scallops, and...
· Some folks swear by raw kina (sea urchin) as a hangover cure.
· If you see a big paint bucket on a local porch it could very well contain salted muttonbirds preserved in their own fat.
· In 2006 a sea lion made her way into the ladies loo at the South Sea Hotel Pub and scared the wits out of a patron.
· Paua (NZ abalone) are hemophiliac so divers must be careful not to cut them when they pry them from rocks. They are also naturally black meat, and they are bleached white when sold to Asia.
· The tui bird is a mimic, many of the sound it produces are those of other birds. It is also called a parson bird because of the wee white "collar" at its throat.
· Seals smell like skunks.
· One resident fisherman had noisy little blue penguins nesting under his house. He put them in a box, put them on-board his boat, and travelled down past Port Pegasus and released them. They beat him home. True yarn.
· The Island has a population of the very rare and mysterious New Zealand long-tailed bat. You can see them at dusk near the golf course road, and also near the street light by the nurses clinic.
· Stewart Island boasts the country's southernmost golf course. (In fact, it boasts the country's southernmost lots of things)
· We are south of the world's southernmost Starbucks.
· If you are lucky you might find some ambergris at Mason Bay. It looks and smells like waxy poo, and it is worth heaps of money.
· When pelagic birds land on boats, they sometimes become "sea-sick" because they are not used to the motion, and the fisherman has to remove them because they're too disoriented to take off themselves.
· There is a bullet hole in the big chain sculpture at the entrance to Rakiura National Park.
· Lewis Acker and his wife raised nine children in the old stone house at Harrold Bay!
