Oreti Beach, Invercargill

The plan was to watch the sunset at Oreti Beach, and see the southern lights. Ten kilometres west of Invercargill, Oreti Beach was a key location for the film 'The World's Fastest Indian', which tells the story of Southland's motorcycling hero Burt Munro. At around 26 kilometres in length, the beach provided Munro with a testing and racing site for his modified Indian motorcycle. In February 1957 Munro set a New Zealand Open Beach record of 131.38 mph at Oreti Beach; in 1975 he raised this to 136 mph.

We drove onto the beach, and I parked the car to create shelter from the sideways wind.  There was a hail storm, so we huddled in the car, it was so loud!

Once the storm had passed, I put the camera tripods up in the lee of the wind, behind the car.

The urchins explored the sandhills in the twilight, and then had to rush back to the car for shelter from another hail storm, followed by lightning and thunder.

We started to glow! It was dark around us, but we could see each other glowing.  

I set the camera on a 5 second exposure, to capture the glow. In real life, it was dark as.

There is purple and green in the clouds.

The wind picked up, sideways, and I huddled behind the car.  The tripods got blown over.  Oreti beach means "the bay that catches the south wind".

After another hail storm, we decided to pack up and go back to the motel, and have milos and a jacuzzi. We encountered another hail storm on the drive back. It certainly was stormy southland weather.

Oreti Beach is one of the few beaches in New Zealand where the road ends and you can drive straight onto the beach.