52°32′24″S  169°8′42″E

I forgo the hike across Campbell Island, having smashed my knee quite thoroughly on the New Year’s Eve hike, and wanting to spend more time with the Southern Royal Albatross and megaherbs on the Col Lyall boardwalk. It’s a hard decision though. I’m sorely tempted to join the hikers when they leave in the morning. Instead we cruise Perseverance Harbour, visiting Elephant Seals alongside the Loneliest Tree in the world. And then it’s back up the boardwalk, surrounded by blooming megaherbs and the clattering and wailing of Southern Royals.

I take it slow, in search of megaherbs to photograph. How to do them justice? They’re such unexpected plants, massive, tropical-looking blooms in the middle of an alpine garden of tussock, sculpted by the wind. After years with sheep running on the island, they’ve made a remarkable comeback – before landing we covered the history of the island and saw just how much damage the sheep did to the vegetation. They’re hope, blooming, that Auckland Island can recover once the pigs there are eradicated.

It’s real Campbell Island weather. The sky is heavy and dark, and we’re treated to both rain and hail. The wind is relentless. Tussock is flat to the ground, and the long stalks of Pleurophyllum species whip frantically in the air. They’re tough, and I’m amazed that they’re not torn free entirely. Up on the saddle, we stagger along the boardwalk to get a view out towards Dent Island. It’s sit or be blown over, so we sit and take in the wild weather.

More megaherbs have bloomed since our last visit, the fields are awash with colour. I love the contrasts between their different forms, colours, and textured foliage. It’s like a botanical garden that has been left to its own devices, rampant and wild with frenzied growth. These species don’t grow anywhere else. There are specimens in the Invercargill botanic gardens that struggle to survive and feebly flower. They’re perfectly adapted to these wild conditions, the peaty soils, the cold and constant wind. If our climate changes, there’ll be nowhere for them to grow.

And of course, there’s the Southern Royal Albatross. Making my way back down, I spend time watching them greet each other, beak-clacking and wailing. Such stately birds, with their black-painted smiles. On land you get a true feeling of their enormous size, and though they’re graceful in the air, it’s obvious that land is not their native terrain. They’re seabirds, meant for the wide ocean, and only relying on these small havens to breed and secure the next generation.

I’m lying in the tussock on Campbell Island, hidden in golden grass. Not far in front of me, a pair of Southern Royal Albatross line their nest with grass and ferns. The flaming yellow of Bulbinella rossi, Ross Lily, surrounds us with golden spears, bright against the green foliage. It’s a subantarctic Eden, lush and full of life. The albatross pair shuffle and preen each other as birds ride the winds overhead. In their gentle, steadfast bond, I see what must be love. Do birds love each other as we do? They settle next to each other, one incubating their single egg. Eyes closed, they shiver their feathers in an albatross sigh.

If anything is worth saving, then it is this. These moments of calm in the stormy Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean’s seabird sentinels, and the world that spins around them – depending on them as much as they do it, and on us.