Joey Help grew up in Flea Bay under the cloud of loosing the family farm. Today with her hair pulled back and a bright headband on her head, smiles from her Yellow kayak pointing out a small blue bird perched on at the base of the grey basalt cliff.

The Help family are artists, farmers and conservationists. Their art hangs in art gallery in Akaroa and on the walls of the guest buildings. Their farm is tucked in Flea Bay. Their conservation work extends from the deep water off the cliffs at the entrance to the bay to the ridges of the extinct volcano.

Today's vibrant Flea Bay team is very different from the childhood Joeys shared. All the money her parents earned was put into conservation. The lack of decent roads made it impossible for her to attend school until she was 8. Her father taught sailing but no boats were available for Joey and her brother. To explore the bay they built rafts from large trees stranded on their beach.

Preserving these old forests and the penguin habitat is where her parents put their earnings and their hearts. Joey and her siblings worked with their parents to build the track from the top of the volcano down the gully and to the beach front cottages. With shovels in hand the Helps carved a track along the hillside. To get to Flea Bay we walked along this Track following the stream through a gully lined with trees and huge ferns as the water cascaded over waterfalls at the edge of the thick lava flows. The Banks Track now brings tourists to stay on the farm and watch the blue penguins returning to their nests at dusk.

We stayed in the Penguin Cottage named for the little blue birds who scramble under the building in the dark. The walls of the Penguin Cottage are decorated with family art. At the foot of our bed hangs one of her mothers watercolors of the view looking out to sea to the entrance to Flea Bay. The kitchen building has a large oil painting of snow covered mountains painted by her grandmother and Joey's cartoon of the team who conducted the 2019-2020 population census in the valley. She has captured a joyous team. Her grinning parents drive an electric ATV in the center. Joy stands behind her parents ATV with a kayak paddle raised high in the air. Her tall slender weasel and stoat trapping sister is one the right with a rifle slung over her shoulder and a dead possum hanging from her belt. Avril, the cartoonist activist and wool felter is on the left holding placards in the air calling for climate justice, criticizing commercial fishing and demanding limits on offshore drilling. Kevin our energetic guide holds a microphone and a booed entitled "The History of Everything." Other team members fill the page together with blue penguins, seals and adorable mop-topped sheep, the extended Help family.

Today the farm has been preserved, the native plants are slowing beating back the invasive species and the penguin colony is thriving. The blue penguins have helped the Helps and the Helps have been helping the penguins.