KEY POINTS:
Stargazers who tell us that the spread of light pollution makes the South American Andes a last refuge for witnessing the stars' true brilliance must never have been to Fiordland.
On a clear, spring night in Dusky Sound I stood on the upper deck of the
cruise boat Island Passage, entranced by the spectacle.
We may have been robbed of such starlight in other parts of New Zealand but in Fiordland, as witnessed by Captain James Cook 238 years ago, the bewitching show goes on.
The southern fiords are redolent of Cook, who made his first voyage there in 1770.
He charted Dusky, the longest of the sounds, during his second voyage
three years later and set up an observatory on a small headland he named
Astronomers Point.
Here he fixed the location of New Zealand on the world map and
calculated his position with remarkable accuracy. His ship, the Resolution, was anchored below in a tiny sheltered harbour and an
overhanging rata tree served as a gangway to the shore.
The tree, although dead, still hangs over the sheltered cove. It was a
poignant encounter as we walked among the stumps of trees felled by Cook's men to make a path to the observatory.
Island Passage later dropped anchor at Supper Cove, where Cook had
stayed. There we tucked into a dinner of blue cod. Perhaps Cook's men had also marvelled at the ease of catching fish in Supper Cove.
Fiordland National Park is a wilderness so grand that it makes you feel like a grain of sand. And Island Passage appeared to have it all to itself.
The New Zealand-owned boat takes 20 passengers - in considerable comfort - to places where larger ships are unable to manoeuvre.
But at 42m and with twin hulls, the boat is comparatively spacious.
In summer, it offers voyages of three to five days among the islands of Auckland's Hauraki Gulf and to the Coromandel before setting out for Great Barrier. In winter the boat goes south.
On all three days among the fiords we woke to the sun glancing off the snowy peaks and sparkling on the water. And it continued to shine as Island Passage voyaged from Breaksea to Dusky and down to Preservation Inlet, the most southern of the sounds.
But as the ecologist on board pointed out, water makes the area special. When it rains, and it rains a lot, streams turn almost instantly into torrents. Waterfalls hurtle down the cliffs, sometimes washing away trees with their force. The water nourishes the dense forests running down sheer slopes to water that's 400m deep in places.
Dolphins make frequent appearances. Seabirds skim the water. Predators have reduced birdsong in the forests but some species hold their own. On
Resolution Island the Department of Conservation is recreating
a pest-free sanctuary.
The huge task honours the brave attempt more than 100 years earlier by the pioneer New Zealand conservationist Richard Henry. In splendid isolation and challenging weather, Henry tried to safeguard flightless birds such as the kakapo and kiwi by moving them to Resolution.
More than once while in Dusky Sound, I thought of Rudyard Kipling's poetic description when he visited New Zealand in 1891. "Last,
loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart."
For information on other Island Passage cruises visit
www.islandescape.co.nz