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Written by Oliver Kieran
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Thursday, 16 February 2006 |
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I am just returned from a
trip to a speck of land on the bottom of the globe as near as possible to the
exact opposite (its antipode!) of Forkhill, where I hail from!
 Auk !!!
The actual point is in the
sea but my wife Betty and myself landed on the uninhabited island of Campbell
Island where we walked among nesting
albatrosses with wingspans of nine feet - who had no fear of us - and sea lions
so big that we certainly had fear of them. We used New Zealand as a staging post and
had conversation with some of the locals.
The Europeans know they are
a fairly recent addition to the islands but the Maoris are "ancient"!
Imagine their surprise when
I told them about the Kilnasaggart stone which was put up by someone with the
same family name as myself - but who died over a hundred years before the first
human (maori) set foot in New Zealand.
AND that stone is very
recent compared with the really old stuff – the Clontygora Court Cairn nearby,
for one example. They struggled to
comprehend.
I wonder if we were the
first people from around Newry to go there?
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