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When grandparents Chris Naylor and Debbie Robb got saddled with four energised children, they decided the perfect rainy day holiday activity would be “mudlarking” in Otago Harbour.
Mudlarking is an activity where people search muddy shores for “treasure” — Ms Robb said usually people were doing this in the Thames in London and pulling up Roman coins and ancient treasures.
In Dunedin, Mr Naylor and Ms Robb, with four children in tow, went down to Otago Harbour at low tide to discover a different sort of treasure.
They found starfish, unusual shells, crabs, sea slug shells, and had been squirted in the face by sea anemones.
Two of the children were Mr Naylor and Ms Robb’s grandchildren, while Pippa and Ella Lowrey were their great nieces.
When they told the children they would be going out to the harbour, there was a bit of confusion around why they would be plodding along the shores in such gloomy weather.
However, once they began discovering things along the shore, the complaints quickly dried up, Ms Robb said.
Mr Naylor said after a morning of mudlarking, they went off to Larnach Castle for lunch.
“I said if they didn’t find enough crabs to eat we’d have to go somewhere else,” he said.