The Fiordland Jewel on Stewart Island Rakiura. Photo / Richard Garden
The Fiordland Jewel on Stewart Island Rakiura. Photo / Richard Garden
Eleanor Barker tracks down our national bird on Stewart Island and experiences the magic of snow at sea level.
It was an ungodly hour in Little Glory Cove, on Rakiura and 18 nylon-clad humans were beginning to emerge from our luxury home at sea.
Gathering on the stern of the Fiordland Jewel, we were quiet, warm and waterproof; well-prepared for the possibility of meeting New Zealand's national animal.
After the tender ferried us to the wharf at The Neck, no one spoke. The red glow of our flashlights eased our exploration and sparingly exposed the gorgeous prehistoric forest. The green held its own against the red light, a novel spectrum. I looked up and the whole Milky Way appeared to be laid out before us.
The only sound was the "swit-swit-swit" of our many thighs. A funny scene — and hardly stealthy. Fortunately, our quarry is hard-of-seeing and rather deaf.
At first, on Ocean Beach, co-skipper Dave Barraclough found only small rats with his thermal telescope. Then all at once the mood changed. Dave had spotted a large, tell-tale ball of heat, a Stewart Island kiwi. Cue the quietest freak-out you can imagine.
Captured in a single red flashlight beam, the reality of a kiwi is surprising. Female Stewart Island kiwi have thumpingly huge legs, quite unlike how we imagine our mascot. They use their beaks like a third limb, sensing and plucking sandhopper larvae from the sand. Kiwi cannot see red light, so she lumbered along the beach, apparently oblivious to our presence. We followed her for some time, then reluctantly watched her disappear into the forest.
Stewart Island brown kiwi. Photo /Supplied
On the way back to the Fiordland Jewel, Dave pointed out pockmarks on the steep slopes where the track meets the forest. "The kiwi pull themselves up there with their beaks to reach their breeding grounds." I was blown away; this bird is strong — and canny.
The kiwi was a highlight, but Rakiura is somewhat of a magnet for these things, and we were perfectly placed to experience it all during our six- night, seven-day journey.
The Fiordland Jewel is a luxury three-deck catamaran designed by skipper Rob Swale — his wife Kate is the one to thank for the comfortable and tasteful interior design. Each cabin features the huge windows that Rob insisted on.
Docked in Oban, her name broadcasts her outsider status, as if her size and million-dollar flashness hadn't already. We had aimed, optimistically, to circumnavigate Stewart Island but hadn't gone further than Port Adventure, on the eastern tip, thanks to 9m waves rolling in from the west and an overabundance of appealing, safer options.
Every day there were rainbows — and huge seabirds. Buller and white-capped albatrosses haunted our fishermen, along with Arctic terns, giant petrel, mollyhawks, giant cormorants, Stewart Island shags and spoonbills. Our keenest kayakers saw little blue penguins and yellow-eyed penguins.
The boat was such an inviting environment that it was occasionally a struggle to leave the living-dining room, the semi-permanent rounds of incredible food and the card game "Scum". The antidote for my baser urges turned out to be the regular stream of kayakers off to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
On one such kayaking expedition, we gathered in a tannin-stained inlet as snow softly fell on our dazzled faces. We played limbo with the large tree branches that stretched into the ocean.
Fishing for cod was a popular activity, as seabirds gathered in great numbers. I preferred to watch rather than participate; quietly cheering on the escapees. But despite this soft-heartedness, I enjoyed the proceeds of the fishing. Chef Damien Noel may have been the most talked-about crew member thanks to the wonderful food he prepared.
He made South Pacific coconut milk ceviche and the most gorgeous chowder I have ever eaten. Another day the boys plucked us paua, which we ate with Damien's fried bread — "the only way". The recipe is from his home marae. Seasoned cruisers among us said they'd never eaten so well at sea.
Rounding out the crew were Rob and Kate's son Jack Swale (their son Joseph scored his skipper's licence during our voyage) and co-skipper Dave, a charter-fishing veteran, hugely knowledgeable about the natural world. He admitted he's been mostly living out of a suitcase since the 1950s: "If it wasn't fish, it was possums." One day we sent out Rob's favourite toy, a $250,000 remote-operated submarine drone, which sent back high resolution live underwater footage. The water was crystal clear, with beer-bottle brown seaweed slowly breathing in and out. The plankton was like heavy rain against a car window.
Theo Easther, 13, with his catch. Photo / Eleanor Barker
Nothing thrills me more than interactions with wild animals. These are travel memories that are the most sinewy, they catch in the teeth of my mind. For days the kayakers were shadowed by bull sea lions, who didn't like the men of our parties but were perfectly happy to mug it up for the ladies. One day we had barely left Oban when we were joined by a pod of enormous dolphins, leaping into the air for applause.
On the day we dredged for Bluff oysters (more or less fruitlessly, the population appeared hammered by those who had come before), I picked up a cute little octopus from the rubble of oyster shells. I returned him to the ocean after posing for photos but he bit me for my trouble. Theo, 13, the youngest of our group, found a little octopus of his own and when it bit him, he launched it with some heft at the ocean — and missed. Fortunately, minutes later, the boneless baby emerged from within a nook of the Fiordland Jewel, to our considerable relief.
The walks in the forest made me want to move here — and to chastise Steven Spielberg for not shooting Jurassic Park on Rakiura. As botanist Leonard Cockayne noted in 1909, "it is an actual piece of the primeval world".
On Stewart Island, the conifer-broadleaf forests are rimu growing above a canopy of kāmahi and southern rātā. Miro and mountain tōtara are also common conifers. Whekī (rough tree ferns), crown ferns, vines and an ornate showcase of mosses flourish in the wet climate.
A Stewart Island robin seemed to have no fear. Photo / Eleanor Barker
Native birds are a common sight and a constant sound, especially the maniacally laughing kākā, and tuī, kereru, korimako (bellbird), Stewart Island robin, pīwakawaka (fantail), weka and tīeke (saddleback) abound.
I had taken an immense liking to our onboard sociologist Marsa Dodson, who had devoted a portion of her remarkable life to working with World War II babies in the Pacific. We walked together, a long way behind the zoomers. Even slow walkers stir up juicy bugs, and so pīwakawaka and tīeke dogged our steps and teased our cameras.
Marsa taught me the word epiphyte, the name for the phenomenon of plants growing on other plants, abundant in this ecosystem. For days after the snow, we would find snowballs resting in the centre of the waist-high, starfish-like piupiu (crown fern) that dominate the forest floor.
In the 700 years since human arrival, more than 75 per cent of New Zealand's forest cover has been burnt or chopped down. Large areas of native bush remain mainly where we've had logistical challenges in getting at it, in the high country and on our mysterious and beautiful orbital islands.
Adventures in a prehistoric world. Photo / Eleanor Barker
Rakiura means the "Land of Glowing Skies", referring to the Aurora Australis that occasionally light up the southern sky. Never mind the aurora, the sunsets and sunrises inspired dashes to our cameras every day. One night, after our kayaking trip was blessed with snow, five of us decamped to the rooftop spa to a show of sheet lightning and snow, an aurora in black and white.
New Zealanders often think Europeans are lucky to have dramatic changes in scenery within a couple of hours of their home turf. Well, so do we. On this trip I saw New Zealand at its most untouched and beautiful, and gained a profound appreciation of the world at our doorstep.
