Muttonbirds, piglets and more
6 August 1957
Tuesday 6 August 1957
[Aboard the NZ Navy vessel ‘Arataki’, to explore some of the islands of Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf]
The Captain, a wicked twinkle in his eye, was desirous of demonstrating to me that the Hauraki Gulf could be as rough as the Cook Strait when it liked and that today was a dirty enough day for anyone. He kept enquiring after my health as I got steadily greener with friendly little remarks such as “Do you think you’ll live?”. Even before we reached Tiri Tiri there were two crises in my internal affairs and I lurched across the wheelhouse to the open leeward door which, with it all, was not very leeward. Sea legs were no longer part of me …
2 hours on from Tiri … he said it was too rough to make Mokohinau tonight and that he’d changed plans and decided to call at Little Barrier on the way out instead of the way back but to put in to Fitzroy on the Great Barrier for the night. ...
I stood out in the rain watching the lively landing operations at Little Barrier, tea in hand, getting more dilute by the minute. We stood offshore, the heavy dinghy was swung out and let down alongside and two of the crew rowed to the boulder beach with the mail, where Mr and Mrs Parkin and dog awaited them. The waves were breaking on the beach in a quite alarming manner and a good many attempts were made to get in close enough, the dinghy standing alternately on her head and her tail while four pairs of eyes watched anxiously from the ‘Arataki’. Mr Parkin in shorts and mackintosh was in the water thigh deep, wet from the shirt down, and quite a bit of water was in the boat by the time the mission was fulfilled, although this was only a mail delivery, no stores.
We waved violently to the distant couple as the dinghy lolloped back to us and they wended their wet way through the bush from the west landing while we wended our wetter way north along the coast of the precipitously magnificent bird and plant sanctuary – unspoiled NZ like so little now, even in this new land. The island was 2300 ft high and seldom without a cloud athwart it. The cloud was dense today and waterfalls were pouring out of it down scars in the heavily bushed cliffs ...
I was almost asleep when the PK [Principal keeper, a Mr Smith] poked his head through the hatch to say we were nearly in to Moko. Plans evidently had been changed again and we were going to try to make it.
6pm and dusk. I collected myself and staggered aloft, dropped into the heaving dinghy and was rowed ashore to where two keepers, two wives and 14-year-old Ann [Smith] awaited me. The second time the dinghy swept up to the iron ladder on the concrete jetty I managed to grip it and lift my feet out of her as she swept on. The PK followed and thereafter three loads of stores. But that was enough; the coal had to stay on board ...
Muttonbirds swooped and chattered overhead, huge in the dusk; the sunset faded beyond the further isles; the lighthouse beamed from 305 feet up; and the ‘Arataki’ bobbed in the anchorage with surface breaking majestically against the stacks beyond. My island home for the next ten days – this was worth any amount of sea-sickness!
Wednesday 7 August 1957
... On the afternoon of the first day I went west, prospecting in muttonbird colonies and on cliffs and reclining in the sun on a slab of rock, writing and gazing at the sunlit panorama of the western isles beyond. A dream island indeed and dream island weather. If this summer sunshine was winter, I was glad I wasn’t here in summer. Even the bronzed residents complained of the heat in summer ...
Thursday 8 August 1957
Weather not so good today. Still very mild but cloudy and with the odd shower. I delayed my starting out by tracing off a map of the islands, a sketch by one of the old keepers. Then I went towards the comparative shelter of the landing and concentrated on the Buffalo grass flat, the Muehlenbeckia beach, the wet pans and the cliffs to either side. My collection of herbarium specimens already numbered over 100 species, about half of them aliens ...
Friday 9 August 1957
... I wandered down past the kitchen gardens, poised precariously on the cliff edge, and found myself looking down into the magnificent rock formation of the cauldron, a huge circular crater dropping from the top of the cliff nearly to sea level 200 feet below, pohutukawas clinging to its vertical sides ... The cauldron was separated from a long narrow vertical-sided gut, almost another cauldron, by a narrow neck of land, three feet wide, the central foot being occupied by a track which led downwards somewhat precariously to the lighthousekeepers’ favourite fishing ground, a 30-foot-high ledge of rock at the mouth of a salty flat filling the bay, with red-billed gulls nesting both sides (and can they dive bomb!). I crossed the isthmus and pottered along the cliff, drinking in magnificent views in all directions. A most spectacular island this from the scenic point of view ...
Saturday 10 August 1957
... In the afternoon I ascertained which part of the gull paddock the old bull was in, entered at a respectable distance, and spent the next few hours within easy range but out of sight and out of mind. My business to examine the gull flora here and on the extreme northern point and the general vegetation pattern between. A rustle in the sedges distracted my attention at one point and I turned to see a nest of weeny pigs, two white and six spotted, three to four days old. The old sow had constructed a dry hidey hole in some dead Mariscus and the squeaking wrigglesome morsels of pink and black were full of life. Ma was grazing at a little distance but took not the slightest notice of me. Pigs, indeed, make such a noise when eating that they seemed quite incapable of noticing anything ...
Tuesday 13 August 1957
The swell had died a little today, sufficient for the PK to row me over to one of the ungrazed islands of the western group. He, I and the dogs trekked down to the landing soon after 8 o’clock, in brilliant sunshine but with quite a stiff breeze behind the breakers surging up on to the boulder beach. I had been supplied with enough food for several days and a box of matches “just in case – the swell rises very swiftly in these parts”. Fortunately, the swell didn’t today and I was safely back on the main island by nightfall.
... it was as well I had my gumboots in as I leapt out of the stern of the dinghy into water of swiftly varying depth, surging over boulders. This was probably the only sandy beach on the islands but the sand was covered at present by the tide.
He rowed off, promising to return about 4pm, weather permitting, and, after a preliminary exploration of the caves and tunnels, I looked for a way up. This I found but it was by no means obvious and I had perforce to haul myself up by the flax plants which were more secure than many of the rocks which I grabbed ...
I dumped my gear on the east cliff top and set off with the minimum gear to the far western cliff. A tremendous struggle, from which I emerged dripping wet from the thick ungrazed vegetation, soon to dry in the warm sunshine bathing the high rocky promontory. As far as was known these precipitous crags of the western isles had never been grazed and they were clothed with a dense growth of flax 4-8 feet high, mixed with pampas grass, pohutukawa, veronica, NZ broom and bracken. As I plunged through it I was thankful that this was NZ and not Australia and that I need not fear snakes!
Transecting and listing, I plunged down through the flax to the base, kicked off boots and socks and pullover ,and roasted myself as I lunched. Then off in the opposite direction for more botanising and down to the beach for the return boat, its approach round the headland heralded by the barking of the dogs on the opposite shore.
