To Stewart Island, for a visit...

Press, 4 January 1980, Page 8

To Stewart Island, for a visit...

The last of two articles by HUGH WILSON from the Stewart Island where he has been doing botanical studies.

Don’t mind the rain on Stewart Island, they, say; it makes the bush grow. Anyway, it always looks much worse through a window. Put on a parka, go and walk in it. You’ll see all the filmy ferns ur>i curled in the . bush and , hear the greywarblers singing. And ah, when those few, still perfect blue days come along, as they surely • do. is there anything io I compare with the windscrubbed colours of sea , and forest, and the sun going down at the head of the inlet, and the mo|lymawks following the fishing boats home into the bay? These things will always draw a. certain kind of people to the smallest of the main . islands of New Zealand. Despite recent local efforts — new air services < arid mini-bus tours on the few kilometres of road — I think the climate and the comparative isolation will preclude '' large-scale tourist development. I, won’t be sorry. Some islanders might like to see a'big tourist hotel go up in the Bay, but the developers? who would put it there are unlikely to be very sensitive to the characteristics which still .make this a rather special place. . To be sure, things have changed. You can' fly there -any day now from Invercargill, landing on a sealed strip cut out of-the bush arid scrub above the town;-the little amphibian service has given way to the Stewart Island Air Services’ Britten Norman Islander and Aztec. From the strip Stewart Island. Travel will run you into, town for 75c. You drive down a road which had the potential to ; be a superb, brief, busrigirt introduction to the Bay, but is instead a rough slash through the forest, with the eyes best averted. I was angry at first, but I honestly don’t think it occurred to the, developers that they could

. .. jE have ’done it any . pother way. The plane seems to arrive and depart in- any weather. So does% the ferry, which makes’ the two-hour run from Bluff on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Everyday is a boat-day for a few "weeks after Christmas. ; For bird enthusiasts, the risk of a rough crossing: is worth it' for views ‘of albatrosses, mollyniawks, smaller petrels, and other seabirds. You mayijwell see porpoises, and even a whale. The contract between that arid the’ damp bird-filled bush' on landing increases according to the wildness of ! the seas... ’ Some people, return to Bluff the. same ■ day. There is time .between boats for some excellent walks if you by-pass the offer of a mini-bus tour. But neither way does the island jus-

tice. Longer-term visitors can stay in the hotel, in various motels, in cabins or tents at Horseshoe Bay, in tents at a very basic, no-charge camping spot nearer town up the Kaipipi road, or rent someone’s holiday crib. As a base for my summer fieldwork on the island I rent a wee cottage under Observation Rock, with a superlative view across bush and birds to the head of Paterson Inlet. I keep glancing at it now as I .write. Today, a southerly breeze is merely ruffling the .surface of this marvellous . stretch of water. • Across the water, bushcovered hills roll in all directions, a reminder that Stewart Island is much more than Halfmoon Bay and- its surroundings. The fishermen know ‘that; some of them take several hours to reach their fishing grounds around the

coast at such distant spots as Broad Bay and the S.W. Muttonbird Islands. The whole life of the small town revolves around fishing and sometimes you get the feeling you are not considered quite a man if you’re not fishing. Most are after crayfish; blue cod are still fished for outside the cray season, but are the mainstay of only a few families now. : ■ Because of the lucrative American market for crayfish. newcomers have joined the older fishing families. But names like Leask and Traill and Hicks and Braggs still figure prominently in this community of some 400 souls. • Another sizeable element in the community is made up of those who have retired here from the larger, busier islands of

New Zealand. Drawn by the surroundings and theway of life, they are often the most zealous in wanting to guard the qualities of the environment, especially of bush and birds, that make it unique. Some have not had the opportunity to go far afield, but the wilderness feeling one can experience in the Stewart Island backcountry is in fact possible close at hand. i ’ In season, trainpers and hunters stride off the boat with their minds on distant places. The most popular route is an eight-day trip around the northern bulge; mostly . following the coast but not always in view of it. Trampers, in fact, encircle the tangle of high country that culminates in Anglem, the highest summit at over 900 m. The Forest Service has provided a chain ■of good huts along the way, and ranging staff are doing a

lot of work to ameliorate the Stewart Island tramper’s. perennial headache — mud. The soil breaks down easily under the pounding of many feet. Mixed with lots of Stewart Island water, it turns sections of track into sloppy cattlewallows. (If you are mentally prepared for mud and hookgrass the trip is a marvellous one). Other tracks are a bit wilder. The southern half of the island is virtually untracked and you need a permit from the Lands and Survey Department to enter the big areas of flora and fauna reserve which make up much of the island’s interior.. Both departments have rangers based at Halfmoon Bay. Permits for hunting are available from the Forest Service ranger. The quarry is chiefly white-tail (Virginian) deer — small, quick animals that move with the grace of antelopes. Red deer are much fewer in number, and more local in distribution. They are the source of, some of the controversy and ill-feeling about the island’s future. Certainly hunters are not keeping their numbers down to levels where the damage to vegetation becomes in any way acceptable. But there is controversy, too, over what the long-term plan for the island should be. Relatively little of it is in private or Maori hands; the two Government departments are responsible for most of it, .with a notable lack of amiable co-' operation. Recently, however, they produced jointly a Land Management Study which certainly does stress the qualities making Stewart Island the extraordinarily valuable place it is. One hopes that it is these values, rather than departmental jealousies and empire-building, or private gain, which will decide what happens to this half-forgotten part of New Zealand’s wild places.