Stewart Island new Zealand

ori origins.

Stay at the South Sea Hotel, a New Zealand classical Pub and the island's community centre, for a glass of cold water and cable and chips. Take a refreshing Stewart Island Smoked Salmon pick nic nick before walking or "roaming" the Great Walk or one of the island's many paths. Head to Ulva Island, an unspoilt, wooded island reserve for birds.

Without residents (or predators), the island provides the possibility to admire fine sandy shores, fine vistas and scarce and endangered avifauna. Canoeing is the ideal way to discover the untouched water and amazing sea creatures. Climb aboard a cruise ship and make your way to the crystalline Paterson Inlet water, which has more than 115 kilometres of unspoilt New Zealand shoreline.

Take a picturesque walk through the jagged and savage countryside of Ulva Island, a botanic gardens full of threatened birdlife and rare plant life.

AA Travelling : Activities in Stewart Island

Throughout the day Stewart Island provides several regular services - Evercargill to Halfmoon Bay back. Throughout the day Stewart Island provides several regular services - Evercargill to Halfmoon Bay back. Unparalleled charter are available for continental destinations. Throughout the day Stewart Island provides several regular services - Evercargill to Halfmoon Bay back.

Unparalleled charter are available for continental destinations.

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Indeed, Halfmoon Bay, the only populated area of Stewart Island, has a precipitation very similar to that of Auckland (1400 mm annually), and last summers the temperatures peaked at 30°C. Stewart Island's luxuriant orchards are home to several cowrie species, as well as a variety of species such as Phutukawa, Poor Knights lilies and other northerly species. Of course this creeper plant will only grow up to the East Cape.

In Stewart Island - and elsewhere in the far southern part - one sometimes finds allegations that this or that company is the "southernmost in the world". "The shift of Stewart Island to an equal degree of northern Hemispheric parallel gives a very different view of this site-related extremeism. And Paris is nearer to the North Pole than Stewart Island to the South Pole.

At 47°S Stewart Island is only slightly nearer to the polar ice than to the equator. The fact that certain things on Stewart Island or in the South South Island can be described exactly as the most southerly is a mirror image less of their width than of the lack of populated lands in higher degrees of the Southern hemisphere.

The only other part of America is further southwards than Stewart Island - to about 55°S parallel. Though described as New Zealand's third island, Stewart Island (Rakiura, "glowing sky", Maori name) is minuscule in comparison to the North and Souths Islands. With 1680 square kilometres, it is only one ninetyth the area of the Südinsel and accounts for only 0.6 percent of our area.

Its 380 inhabitants are gathered around Halfmoon Bay (also known as Oban), and almost the whole island is in indigenous flora. By March 2002 a large part of the area of the Dog Area will become a Marine Reserve and the local people have some concerns about the impact of this renaming on the island.

Hiking trails - perhaps 300 km long - offer easy entry to the northern and southern parts of the island, but the southern part is a wildlife area, low on trails and cabins. It is not so much the kingdom of the natural world that the inhabitants of the island care about, but their own way of being. For the last 60 years fisheries have been the mainstay of our livelihood.

It is never an easiest way to make a livelihood to fish in a place like Stewart Island. To live on an island in isolation also requires a certain amount of independence, the capacity to deal with anything that can go awry, while using only locally available natural ressources. A considerable proportion of Stewart Islanders belongs to the family that has been on the island for three, four or even five generation.

You don't completely believe in the administration and are scared that doing this will become too strong on your island. We also have scheduled flights to the island. However, better accessibility means more visits, and visits put greater emphasis on better amenities. Even though the sewage and electricity plants were generally appreciated, not all their effects were appreciated by the inhabitants of the island I talked to.

In the last three years, I had been told that real estate on the island had increased fourfold in expectation of rising domestic consumption. Does Stewart Island have enough to attract large hotel and tourist boat loads, as Moore was afraid? Large scales press against the quay, and towards the east end of the shore other large structures stretch across the sandy shore, giving the foreland an untypical industry look for the remainder of the island.

All 40 or 50 anchored ships in the evenings were once industrial fishery craft, but today two third of them are engaged in tourist activities. There' a grocery shop behind the quay and across the street another column of Stewart Island living, the South Sea Hotel.

Among the biggest edifices are the state-of-the-art DoC Center and the 50,000 annual traffic center. There are a lot of sea taxi's and other small craft here because this sand is within the wide limits of Paterson Inlet, a large and beautiful port encircled by scrub and containing a number of beautiful islets.

Yarrow bushes are the principal species of plant at the wind-whipped Ackers Point, at the tip of the coastline; in early spring, sheepfowl ( "Schergewässer") live in the caves below. Deciduous trees, Pseudopanax, New Zealand fuchsias, kamamhi, Dracophyllum long-ifblium, raata and simu are widespread in less prominent bushwalks. There are many species of ferns on the ground and indigenous bird species, especially pigeons, cocoa and hunchbacks.

Cocoa is a frequent visitor of the garden, drawn by the variety of wildlife on the imported plant and the foods that some local people offer for them. When an Englishwoman and I were fighting against a powerful East to keep our packages of newspapers with seafood and crisps under our wing, one night I asked her what she thought was the best she had seen on Stewart Island.

"She answered without delay, Ulva Island." Though Stewart Island is as well equipped with rat, possum and wildcat life as the whole land, it is free of ermine, ferret and weasel. Ulva also lacks fossums and kittens, and rat extermination. Seldom birds and plants, such as the saddle roof of the South Island and the threatened Gunnerahamiltonii coastal weed, are introduced again.

Ulva is an open shrine like Tiritiri Matangi in the Hauraki Gulf, but unlike Tiritiri it keeps its pristine area. In 1986 Cox came to Stewart Island as a trainer, then worked as a joiner and craftsman before becoming a chartered shipper. So I asked him what he thought of the choice of the Nationalpark.

When I stopped on the way to write a notice, a Stewart Island redbreast landed near by. There' some secrets about Stewart Island bird life. Even though in the latter 1970' and early 1980' over a hundred kakapos were found in the area just off the pewter chain - all relocated from the island (see the history of kakapos in this issue) - it is strange that no pewter miner or gold prospector has seen or heard the bird in the area a hundred years before.

A few folks wonder whether a delivery of Fiordland Qakapo, published in Port Pegasus in the end of the 1800s, was the resource for all of Stewart Island's kakapos. Earlier natural scientists such as Leonard Cockayne and Herbert Guthrie-Smith (see New Zealand Geographic, Issue 27) stated that there were no kiwis in their day northerly of the tin chain, but they certainly are now.

From the three major New Zealand archipelagos, Stewart gives the visitor the best chances of meeting a chiwi in the wilderness. Ulva patrons had said that on a rainy night they had seen a pair looking for food. The Stewart Island is a Rollercoaster that travels from Halfmoon Bay and climbs steeply over lush promontories to beautiful protected sand coves, including the country's best.

Southland is the end of the street, but the beginning of the 125 km long circuit which is loved by hitchhikers. By the way to the Garden Mound I had a nice view back to the Paterson Inlet and up the coastline to Mount Anglem, the highest summit of the island (980 m).

Situated to the northern side was the forested Port William peninsula, where 11 Shetland Islanders and their young founded a settlement in the early 1870s. Those colonists were to go angling and clear agricultural lands, but the fishery was unknown and low-paying, and the shrub turned out to be too discouraging for those who had grown up on tree free islands.

Halfmoon Bay Area, though beautiful, was, I felt, not spectecular (although from the places I had attended only Ulva Island and Lee Bay should be admitted to the Nationalpark). So I was excited to see what was further down the road, and the occasion came when Peter Tait, Ex-Forest Service Knightanger, Ex-Fisherman and now cruising company, invited me to take some of his buddies and his Iris aboard their 57-foot Telisker to Port Pegasus.

Pegasus Port is a huge, secluded port on the eastern shore, right in the heart of the DoC Nationalpark and DoC' s wildlife area. When we were a few miles southwards, there was a little wobbling to our arcade and a strong enough sea breez to ensure the roll up of the canvas. We towed the foresail two ours later, before Tia Island, with moderate waves and strong winds.

At Owen Island the ocean was big and the winds high. South coast developing was quite different from further northern. The peaks were littered with undisturbed woodland and undergrowth. Six hrs. it took to get to the Port Pegasus dugout, and although the ripples inside the northern arm were poor, the winds were fierce and the Rams dropped into sheds.

Under these circumstances, the woods did not look welcoming at all, but there was a kind of village here after pewter was discovered in brooks that drained the near pewter chain (see New Zealand Geographic, Issue 42). The Pegasus Port is a system of flooded valleys, and three islets and a large coastline protects it from the often savage sea.

Situated at the top of the Small Craft Retreat, a small branch of river that is shrinking into a creek, we found a dozen New Zealand sealions snapping between the large Rimbu. Dait took some of us around Ernest Island in one of Tidisker's zodiac signs to see the stone rocks and delicate balance plates hanging from them.

At the leeward side of the island he made us lay down on the bottom of the vessel, then he let us fall into a fissure with only centimeters of distance around us. During the 1820' William Stewart-not the map maker after whom Stewart Island is called ( a companion on board the robot Pegasus 1809), but a fraud, tried to have a vessel constructed here.

He arrested nine men and nine wives from the Bay of Islands, headed by a William Cook, who commissioned them to construct a 100-ton ship in Port Pegasus and promised to provide them with groceries and goods. It was finally finished and marketed in 1833, after which the builders of the ship came back to the Bay of Islands.

Undoubtedly there had been an abundance of wood for building ships, but in the early 1900s there was a lot of wood around all New Zealand ports, and this place felt grim and grumpy even in May. In the far northern part the Mount Anglem taper was clearly seen. and the Mutton Bird Islands in the western part.

There' Big and Little Moggy Islands, East Harbour and East Harbour. This was a desolate but dramatic scenery, different from anything else in New Zealand. There was no rains on this particular date, but the precipitation is in the 7 meter per year Liga, far from Halfmoon Bay, just a few dozen kilometers south.

Searching the brush resulted in a distinctive wallpapered saurian- Stewart Island's rarely seen harbour girl gear, one of New Zealand's most appealing reptiles. Here's a selection of the best lizards in the world. In the early afternoon, as we drove through Cook Arm and back to the North Arm, the clouds of sunshine were shining through, their beams illuminating the shrub and persuading the blooming glow of the burning ratas into flames.

Everywhere where topsoil can settle, the woods begin and never stop. Somewhere else in New Zealand, the shrub that descends to the ocean is a relict to appreciate. There'?s almost nothing like that on the North Island. Just how daunting the woods must have been for emigrants from civic and pasteoral Europe a hundred and a half years ago. Back on the Halfmoon Bay coastline, we have settled in a few creeks just south of Lord River.

A passionate predator, Noel Bulman had an eyes on roe on the beach and I asked him about the game. Large numbers of predators come from the continent to track white-tailed stags - "grey spirits" - whose primary populations are on Stewart Island. In 1905 nine were freed in Port Pegasus, but since then they have expanded all over the island.

Stags are the focus of a big fight on Stewart Island. Many of the island's inhabitants consider stag hunts an integrated part of life on Stewart Island, but they want them to be wiped out along with all other parasites. When I spoke to other natives about the subject, it became clear that the 1080 concerns had exceeded the fact.

Concerns about the island forest he is mandated to, the doctor has found that although the number of stags has not increased for 20 years, the number of opossums has increased. Opossums, not roe deer, are the primary foe of the Dog, and the ministry has located six units of about 5000 ha each in which opossums must be urgently controlled.

A decision has yet to be made on the methodology, but one of the options is to use 1080 air droplets, a methodology that has been used elsewhere in the state. A benefit of 1080 intoxication over other techniques is that the toxin stays activated for some period of times in the case of killed predators, thus providing alternative killing of the cat and rat when eating the cadavers.

Trouble is that both stags and opossums are drawn to the 1080 cereal-based granules. However, it has nationally agreed that all stags throughout New Zealand should be exterminated as their habitat is at the cost of indigenous vegetation, and the Doc's legislative role is to safeguard indigenous species.

Jäger, the killing of stags with other means than a leisure ball is a horror for them. Earlier in 2001 it was said that a decline of 1080 people in the Blue Mountains of West Otago had caused thousands of deer to die and made news across the nation - exactly the result feared by Stewart Islanders.

Emotions are so heated about the affair that there have been menaces to free Musteliden on Ulva Island if 1080 is drop. The distrust of Doc and the hunch of 1080 go far beyond the hunt. Cave Helen, a celebrity business woman on the island, said that she thought the fighters really liked the island, that the stag didn't do any damage and that she would be sorry to see her go.

"1080 gets into bugs, so how do we know it won't harm kiwi?" she added. During my talks with the inhabitants of the island I had given them treats such as the fact that 1080 disintegrates quickly in the sea, that only 2 to 3 kg of lure per acre are dumped (with about two spoons of 1080) and that DoC would certainly do nothing to endanger the fauna they were accused of.

And Malcolm Wylie, a Doc official, tells me that some tomatoes and redbreasts were slaughtered in Pureora Forest 1080 and that it is actually poisonous to bugs. Bottom species in areas with high precipitation abort the toxin in one to two months, and the predilution coefficient means that 1080 is never a concern in water.

27 years ago on Stewart Island with the Forest Service, 27 years ago, he came to the island and when in 1987 he founded Dog, he became the first restorer of the island. At that time Stewart Island was a seperate protected area, today it is managed as part of Southland. Then I asked him what he thought were the specialities of the island.

"This island consists of three major boulders. Mount Anglem in the northern part, Mount Rakeahua in the center and the Tin Range in the southern part. Forests grow in a thick soil cover on a cliff, and there are no tap roots. What did he think of the upcoming Nationalpark and the fear of an unbridled tourist industry?

"Actually, we have had a Nationalpark for years, and I don't think the changes will be very big. In addition, there are the high number of rainy evenings, the ocean crossings, the costs of travel and the shortage of amenable "tourist landscape" and I do not believe that the nature reserve's conservation will bring about a major transformation.

Unavoidably, the discussion turned to the Nationalpark. Schofield, a former stag catcher and forest warden of the Department of Internal Affairs and then Principal Rancher of Fiordland Nature Reserve, has made a number of petitions to the conservation agency regarding the area. They argue that it would be better to provide more pest-free sanctuaries (such as Ulva and the Codfish Islands) on the many small offshore islets than to waste cash on piece by piece insect eradication on the isle.

Between the city and the reserve, a bumper area of DoC country is being built "to reassure local nerves," but Schofield says the conservation agency has already indicated that this could be integrated into the reserve later. Seated in the Schofields' luxurious house above Ringaringa Bay with views of the Paterson Inlet water, I asked Murray and his Mrs. Nancy about Stewart Island angling.

For seven years they fish together and reach as far as the Snares in the north. Further angling experience came from John Leaask, whose ancestors came from the Orkney Islands via the Otago Gold Fields to Stewart Island in 1862. Leaks dad used to fish, and he himself began to fish full on at the tender age of 13 and only stopped two and a half years ago at the tender age of 68.

He' still going out every other night with tourist codfish. It was my turn to go angling. Seaweed around Stewart Island is abundant and varied, much more abundant than around Auckland and Northland. Another southerly specialty is the lilac coloured maritime bulbs that swing softly from the quays. After Andrew Hamilton had consented to go out with me for my cable fish, he started his tender from the quay into the waters three meters lower by just giving it a strong push.

Inhabitants of the island found decade ago that the simplest way to capture cable fish was in bait pans, similar to catching river cancers. It'?s a challenging job to fish all afternoon like this. Crabs and pauas are the other major quotas in the water around Stewart Island. Then one night I hooked up with Garry Neave and his crew member as they went back from an eight-day crab fishery cruise to the south of the island.

Outside in the shed stood a 6 metre long trimu block that LeQuesne and Greg Northe had engraved and which represented the history of Stewart Island. A Maori ancestor was shown along with kiwis, kakapos, yolks, fishermen' vessels, shells - all with a Stewart Island link. Among these were a solar-powered airplane that could carry 5000 people, submarine ships for travellers to prevent sea sickness, and kiwis that had redesigned their wing to fight game.

Numerous smaller New Zealand congregations in comfortable surroundings have drawn a powerful art style in. Nelson, Golden Bay, Coromandel, Waiheke Island and the Otago Peninsula come to your fore. And Stewart Island is an exemption. Both of the woodcarvers I saw, both part-time workers, were the only artist I saw on the island. In recent years, the island's prosperity has been helped by fish farming, which was mainly located in Big Glory Bay.

" The few acres of the yard produce about 3000 tons of fish per year, which makes the Big Glory water one of the most fertile on the island. Holga's primary occupation was now chief cook of the restaurant, but he still did a lot of other work on the side. Raylene Waddell and Ronnie were Southland school teachers who have been on holiday on the island for 14 years and have chosen to retreat.

"and when he comes to the island, he hoists a banner from his mast. Kids are the futures, on Stewart Island like anywhere else. Recently, the people of the island had finished a giant and splendid communal building for well over $1 million, but during my few week on the island I had seen few indications that it was being used.

On Stewart Island, where most of the local people know whose car belongs to whom, it still went against the mark. Invercargill scholar John Hall-Jones cites Leonard Cockayne's 1909 appraisal of the island in his superb Stewart Island Explored. Words I believe captivate the unique nature of the place:

"Stewart Island's recreational abilities can hardly be overrated. It is certain that at some point it will not only be held in New Zealand, but throughout Australasia. This is the most important benefit of the island and a difficult to underestimate. It is my guess that our Fourteenth NP contains a greater diversity of terrains, forests, coastlines and uncommon species than any of the other thirteenth.

Similarly, the humans of Stewart Island are a relict of an older New Zealand, when humans actually live in powerful societies instead of just spreading the word, and when humans worked harder to snatch a life from it. Elderly natives rightly consider themselves threatened, but the Nationalpark is only another one-way street into the modern age, which the island is already far away.

When only the grassroots communities could be safeguarded as well as the island's nature.