It was the last day of May 2014, a Saturday.
Upon arriving at the Royal Albatross Centre, where I am currently manager of operations Taiaroa Head, it was a little cool with a light breeze of about 20 knots. This would be a pretty typical start to a day at Pukekura at that time of year.
There were a few cars in the car park and the albatross were flying; they do like a bit of a breeze.
So my day was starting off pretty normally.
About 10am, some of my staff had arrived and were getting the centre ready for the day.
While this was happening I took the opportunity to check the booking system before opening the doors to visitors about 10.15am.
We had about 10 people already booked, of various nationalities, with space for a few more early bird watchers.
We opened the doors to the centre a little early, because there were a few people milling about outside in the wind.
As the centre started to fill and we were processing the reservations for the first tour, I found myself at the counter serving some new visitors from the UK, who also had a friend with them from New Zealand.
Their friend, a Mr Paul Gleeson, was from Auckland and they made the reservation for all three under the name Gleeson.
Nothing unusual at all in that, but something was starting to niggle in the back of my brain; there was something familiar about this Gleeson reservation.
Anyway, the guide we had for the 10.30 tour was a young lad from the rural area of Taieri, and to be fair, Josh is a very competent and knowledgeable young fellow.
I probably need to state at this point that I am better with faces than names and the lady in the Gleeson party from the UK looked familiar.
After Josh had taken the group into the tour room to commence their tour, I checked with the other staff in the building to see if they thought the lady was who I thought she was, but no-one could help me.
When Josh came out of the tour room briefly, I checked with him, but he had no idea; she was definitely from the wrong generation for him.
Even when I told him who she was, he had absolutely no idea.
The younger generation, eh!Thank mankind for the internet.
I googled the name Gleeson and came up with an agent/promoter based in New Zealand.
Things were starting to get interesting. He was obviously the New Zealand friend of the UK couple.
I decided it had to be the person I thought it was.
At the end of the one-hour albatross tour, I approached Paul Gleeson, the agent, while they were still in the Richdale Observatory to see if their party was under any time constraints.
The indication was they needed to be back in Dunedin by 1pm for a rehearsal at the Town Hall.
This confirmed my suspicions that the UK visitor was none other than our own Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
Understanding their scheduling, I asked Dame Kiri if she would be interested in seeing other parts of Pukekura (Taiaroa Head) that were not part of the tour they had paid for.
There were 15 people on her tour and after they had left the observatory, I initially took her party to the fort and then walked them down the road.
This provided an opportunity to better inform them of the work of the Otago Peninsula Trust on the headland.
It also provided an opportunity to view fur seal pups playing in the rock pools and a better vantage spot to view two of the albatross chicks.
We concluded the experience at Pukekura with a coffee and discussion about the impacts of the fishing industry on albatross.
Prior to leaving the centre we discussed the significance of the pou and my daughter Sarah concluded the korero with a solo waiata before Dame Kiri and her party departed.
I was fortunate enough to be invited by Dame Kiri to be her guest at the performance at the Town Hall the next day.
Kiri opened the recital by indicating she would later speak of the extraordinary day she had spent the day before at the albatross colony.
Halfway through the second act, she spent five minutes ''singing'' the praises of her experience at Taiaroa Head, saying it was something she would remember for the rest of her life.
At the concert Dame Kiri provided a single encore, which she dedicated to Sarah as utu (reciprocity) for the waiata she had received the day before.
Rose and I were overwhelmed by this and left in awe of New Zealand's most famous performer.
So in conclusion, I must admit that this was not necessarily my best day ever, though it came very close.
However, the morning that Dame Kiri Te Kanawa spent at the royal albatross colony at Pukekura was hers.
• Hoani Langsbury, manager of operations Taiaroa Head.
