2014/02 Falklands trip - New Haven |
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Monday February 3rd
Some of these paragraphs and pictures are only available via the family's userids and passwords. Family references on this public page have been de-personalized. |
It was a dry and windy morning. M took us on a drive further along the main road to New Haven on the west coast where the ferry goes about 10 miles across the Falkland Channel to Port Howard on the island of West Falkland. It’s an on-demand service arranged in advance so there’s nothing much going on there the rest of the time
Off to one side of the terminal was a small colony of Gentoo penguins, in two groups, some still with small chicks at their feet. Older chicks seem to just sleep 
where they fall. The Gentoos don’t dig burrows, but build a small mound where the egg is laid. They stay around the colony’s patch all year.
Like the Magellanics we’d seen in Chile, the males will throw their heads back and sing out but the Gentoo hallelujah is much softer. The Gentoos are also closer in appearance to movie penguins with their white shirtfronts and orange beaks and feet.
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New Haven gentoo colony |
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The Gentoos largely ignored us, only taking a detour if we were in their way. We couldn’t see any penguins in the water, but when we went to have a closer look, the group nearest the shore panicked and rushed over to join the other group. All we could think was that we’d accidentally cut them off from their escape route to the sea.
We left the penguins in peace, and M drove us across country on what used to be a sheep herding route to nearby Goose Green. The picture shows the kind of driving, not difficult in the 4WD, but very bouncy and slow going.
We came to this bridge over Bodie Creek, an amazingly sophisticated structure for its location and purpose. It is the most southerly suspension bridge in the world. Sadly, the route 
was bypassed by the road built after the war, and the bridge is no longer maintained, and is slowly rotting away.
We passed an area that was fenced off and festooned with warning signs, a minefield laid by the Argentinians during the war. Unlike most countries that lay mines in a simple grid pattern, the Argentinians used a system of knotted ropes to indicate where they were. The Brits didn’t know what the ropes were and destroyed them, so now nobody knew where the individual mines were. Most Falklanders would rather write off these remote areas for ever than risk lives to clear them. Some of the fields around Stanley have been cleared.
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Bodie Creek and Goose Green |
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Goose Green has a church and a primary school, a large settlement by Falklands standards. For secondary schooling the kids would have to go to boarding school in Stanley. The population of 70 was far outnumbered by the sheep brought into the streets for shearing. During the war, over a hundred people were locked up in the community hall to prevent them from communicating with the British forces.
Unfortunately, when we returned to Darwun, Sandie was feeling a bit groggy, probably that cold from Anita in Chile.
M and I took the dogs for a walk around the north side of Darwin. This was one of the areas fought over in the war, and our walk took us past the memorial for Colonel “H” Jones. He was initially one of the heroes of the war but it eventually emerged that although heroic his command judgment was poor.
This picture was taken from the battlefield area. The water is Darwin Harbour. The memorial to Colonel H is at bottom right and Darwin is just over that hill.