Chatham’s

 Venturing into the unknown - the Chatham Islands.

Arrival to blue skies and sunshine

  We are flying to the Chatham Islands, 750kms east of Wellington, on the tail end of Cyclone Gita.  Not so you’d notice, as even though our scheduled departure has slipped a couple of hours - in a warp that we recognise as Chathams Time - the 90 minute flight on our Convair 580 is noisy, but uneventful and untroubled by turbulence.

Flying over the Te Whanga Lagoon, which takes up about a fifth of the main island's territory, we approach the Inia Willian Tuuta Memorial Aerodrome on one of the two inhabited islands - Chatham. The lagoon sports the vaguely bilious colours of algae bloom, but it transpires this is pollution from swan shit.  Yes, there are literally thousands of black swans on the island and they are a pest.  Each year there is a swan egg hunt in a effort to at least keep the population in check, if not decrease it.  Last year 600 eggs were found.  Locals used to destroy the eggs, but then the swan would lay another. Now a hole is poked in the egg and it is left in the nest. The swan will sit on it, but it won't hatch. 

 

Flying over the lagoon

Why have we come to this remote 10 island archipelago?  Why not - it is part of New Zealand but generally only heard of at end of the weather forecast, typically with the words, "and in the Chatham Islands, cloudy and overcast with showers".  The internet describes the climate as having "a narrow temperature range and relatively frequent rainfal".  We arrive prepared for cooler temperatures and rain.  We are rewarded with above average temperatures (early 20s C) and sun, with a bit of drizzle on one afternoon.  This makes for perfect exploring weather. 

The 900ish square km island has a shape that defies adequate description - google a map - and it is the topography and geology that makes it such an interesting place. The village of Waitangi sits at the waist of the landmass and unsealed roads extend to the Northwest and Northeast - divided by the massive lagoon, and to the  Southwest and Southeast. 

 

Chatham Island Oystercatchers on Wharekauri Beach, north coast

Remarkably, for a smallish Island the landscape varies considerably  - in general it is hilly with lots of bays, beaches, rocky shore and coastal shoals.  The ocean abounds with fish and crayfish and their export forms the basis of the economy.  There are farms  covering a lot of the island, but we are constantly told there is no money in farming, and the better maintained farms we see are those where the families have fishing income as well.  There are many thistle and gorse covered paddocks with no sigs of maintenance that attest to the financial difficulties of farming so far from supplies and markets.  Everything - everything - has to be shipped in or flown in at considerable cost.  Fencing costs 40% more to do on the Chathams than on the mainland - therefore when driving you need to be alert to wandering stock. 

           

classic Chathams scene

Each day we head off in a different direction and find something we haven't seen before.  At the Haupupu National Reserve we are shown rakau moriori - Moriori tree carvings hundreds of years old.  Many have been lost through time and a lack of understanding about preservation and very few remain in the reserve. 

 

Moriori tree carving

In the north there are volcanic peaks and a large proportion of the island is peat - there are also sand dunes, schist, basalt, limestone, fresh water lakes and volcanic lava flows. In the  words of one local "God must have made the Chathams last. He had a wheelbarrow full of everything left over and used them up here".  

At the stone cottage we meet Helen who, after years on the mainland has come back to live in isolation, without running water - she's also getting rid of her generator and Sky dish - she doesn't need power, and is happy if she has plenty of batteries for her radio.  This article  

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/nz-life-leisure/72077747/Living-in-isolation-on-the-Chatham-Islands  describes more about the cottage and her life, but I am here to tell you Helen appears genetically unable to dispose of anything and has a magpie's compulsion to amass. She has filled the cottage with considerably more bric a brac (aka junk) since this article appeared a couple of years ago. She is a compelling storyteller and has a wealth of stories to tell.

         

Helen’s kitchen

  

Helen the storyteller

 

Isolation and weather patterns have created a specific ecosystem and growing conditions - the same plants we have on the mainland have evolved differently here. A great example is the lancewood - on mainland New Zeland the juvenile plant has sharp leathery foliage to protect it from moa (in the olden days!). There were never moa on the Chathams so the juvenile lancewood has smooth leaves. 

       

More stunning coast, this time lava beds

But it is seafood that is the star of the Chathams and Sunday means the Kaingaroa Social Club fundraiser Seafood Buffet.  

The club rooms have a stunning location

Local families prepare their speciality dish and you can almost guarantee every tourist on the island will be there, along with a good representation of locals.  For $60 a head you will enjoy down home cooking of crayfish, paua, whitebait, cooked in mornay sauces, or in lasagne and pies; white fish (blue cod, moki) either fried, smoked, baked whole, plus vegetables of course.  

Fabulous seafood - the tables are groaning, as are our stomachs when we leave.       

We tried mutton bird (aka sooty shearwater or titi) for the first - and last - time. We drank beer and wine and talked to locals and visitors and drove home 60kms on the gravel road in the dark.  We stopped when we came across a couple of other tourists who had hit a sheep - gravel roads and errant stock are  major hazards and the cause of long wait times at the panel beaters.  We understand why rental vehicles are so prohibitively expensive - $300 a day for our 10 seater van.

           

Crayfish season closes for March and April. We saw many stacks of cray pots like this

Chatham Islanders seem to consider themselves New Zealanders, but not. They refer to the mainland as New Zealand, and we find ourselves doing the same thing after a few days there. It feels like a different country, 45 minutes ahead in time zone, but 45 years in the past.  Not a bad thing.. 

            

Chatham Islands wood pigeon, aka Parea

        

Red bluff tuff - iron in the soil rusts giving the red colour

Nikau forest in a DOC recreation area

 

         

The wharf at Kaingaroa

Across the ocean to the volcanoes in the north

   

What colour is nostalgia?

 

Does it have a colour at all?  A few days in my turangawaewae (literally a place to stand; more generally, where you come from) of Taranaki had me thinking nostalgia has the colour black. 

 

 

But not in a bad way.  

 

The black of the volcanic iron sands on the beaches - it makes me remember the beach trips of my childhood when you left the safety of your towel and ran across the scorching sand to the cool solace of the ocean.  There were countless picnics at New Plymouth’s Ngamotu Beach, where you’d lie under the pohutukawa trees and get ready for that run across the sand.  Bacon and egg pie, sandwiches and orange cordial. The taste of childhood. 

 

 

Ngamotu Beach

In retrospect, New Plymouth doesn’t have a standardly beautiful beach, yet a working port and towering power station chimney give it character and a certain grim beauty.  

 

The port, Paritutu, and the power station chimney

 

The black of the sugar loaves rearing out of the sea at the harbour.  I’ve just had to google why they are called sugar loaves.  They are the Sugar Loaf Islands and, along with the pinnacle rock Paritutu, are the remains of a ring fracture or eroded volcanic vents, yet for me they’re an indelible memory of Taranaki. 

 

 

The black of Mount Taranaki (2,518 metres) against the Summer twilight.  I grew up under the shadow of this mountain, though  until 1986 it was Mount Egmont, named by Captain Cook after some British nonentity. 

 

Mount Taranaki

 

The black of the rocks along the shore.  There’s now a coastal walkway/cycleway stretching 11 kms from the Port to suburban Bell Block.  The path runs close to downtown, along surf beaches, across several rivers, through a wetland and emerges in a park.  

There’s a beautiful bridge that on a perfect day, rare in Taranaki, frames the moutain. 

If you squint, the mountain is visible in the photo.

 

Wave. Or whale’s ribs? And where’s the mountain?

There are a number of sculptures along the path, not least the 45 metre high Wind Wand, another Len Lye design that was too complex when he came up with it, but modern teachnology and engineering made possible. 

 

Wind Wand

 

 

Or maybe it’s just the black heart of the bitch nun who haunted my high school years and, apparently, haunts me now.  You know who you are Sister Barbara. 

 

Now I have to add silver to my memory bank. The recently completed addition to the Govett Brewster Art Gallery is the spectacular Len Lye Centre, a home for the kinetic artist’s works and archive. Disappointingly few of his sculptures on display but the architecture of the Centre alone is worth the visit. 

 

 

The Len Lye Centre

To quote the website “Like a Lye sculpture, the shimmering stainless steel façade is a striking and provocative expression of movement. The curtain-like exterior is seemingly fluid as the curved steel reflects and transmits light, activating the spaces within and without. It is a modern day temple, reinterpreting Lye’s fusion of ancient and modern concepts, and his proposition for a ‘temple of art’.”  What they said.    For me it was a chance to relive memories of a misspent youth - hours spent underage drinking at the White Hart hotel wine bar instead of taking Physics. 

The White Hart, scene of my youthful exuberance, reflected

Sadly, the White Hart Hotel has become ‘trendy’, and is now the sort of venue old school motorcycle gangs wouldn’t be seen dead at - let alone underage Catholic school girls.