Walking on Hokio Beach at 7:30 am I noticed a white object moving south to north about 1km off the beach out to sea. I initially thought it was a light plane such as a Cessna or perhaps a Hughes 300 helicopter but after observing it for 20 seconds or so I could see it had no wings and wasn't behaving 'normally'. Rather than flying in a direct line it was more slowly hovering northwards parallel with the beach. At this moment I was cursing that I had left the binoculars and 300mm lens back in the car. I took 6 photo's with my 55mm lens. I cropped one image and did some basic adjustments but was lacking a decent photo editing program to go any further.