This post is in no sense boasting
Not only have I been to Stewart Island (and I'm pleased to say that there's no Burger King in Oban, the little settlement), but I've taken the water taxi to Ulva Island, a wee speck in Halfmoon Bay. The girl friend and I were able to walk around Ulva in a day, with stops at a few inlets to admire the toasty-brown sand and even go for a swim in the Southern Ocean, the clearest salt water on earth.
And the coldest. Antarctica seems very close when you wade into that indescribable brine. I’m proud to say that I walked in as far as my lower lip. When I looked down, I could see the sun reflected n my toenails, the water was that clear. If I hadn’t been freezing to death, I couldn’t have been sure that I was in water at all.
Bird life included at least three wekas, flightless birds about the size of a common pigeon but more streamlined. I assume they were introduced; it’s hard to see how a flightless bird could make it across the Fauveaux Strait any other way. One of them served as harbormaster at the water taxi landing. He was quite used to people, and came hurrying up to us, as good as saying, “Howdy, howdy, welcome ashore! Say, got any crackers?†Even with almost half of his upper mandible broken off, he could handle a biscuit with great efficiency. Later, at English Bay, where I swam, another trading-post weka even let me feed him out of my hand.
But when we stopped to rest at Cockney Bay, a south-facing inlet, the third weka was quite different. I doubt that he saw many humans in the course of his day. He was working the tide-wrack, shaking out copepods and other edibles. He had no idea what a cracker was, and he kept his distance from us.
As we sat there looking across the water at the black interior hills of Stewart, with a storm coming up out of the empty ocean beyond and this uncanny bird watchfully ignoring us, I’ve never felt so far from anywhere; I’ve never felt so fully the irrelevance of man. There was surely the ends of the earth.
Hiking back through the rain forest (and a cold rain), we heard a pair of kakas cackling devilishly in the treetops, and even caught a glimpse of them: big green parrots rather like keas but not as raffish. They sounded like fiends exulting over us two poor humans toiling through the mud and otherworldy bush. Again, that chill little woodwind tune played down and back up my spine: the world is immense and we are of no importance in it.
We caught the last water taxi of the day back to Oban. When we came ashore, we saw a party of three men and woman arriving after a two-day tramp around Stewart Island. They looked fit, tired, fly-bitten and glad to be back, and God! how we envied them! If we ever go back to Stewart, we’re going on that tramp. After all, when you’ve faced the black flies of Michigan, Te Namu is nobody to fear.
http://www.stewartisland.co.nz/Island_map.htm
Not only have I been to Stewart Island (and I'm pleased to say that there's no Burger King in Oban, the little settlement), but I've taken the water taxi to Ulva Island, a wee speck in Halfmoon Bay. The girl friend and I were able to walk around Ulva in a day, with stops at a few inlets to admire the toasty-brown sand and even go for a swim in the Southern Ocean, the clearest salt water on earth.
And the coldest. Antarctica seems very close when you wade into that indescribable brine. I’m proud to say that I walked in as far as my lower lip. When I looked down, I could see the sun reflected n my toenails, the water was that clear. If I hadn’t been freezing to death, I couldn’t have been sure that I was in water at all.
Bird life included at least three wekas, flightless birds about the size of a common pigeon but more streamlined. I assume they were introduced; it’s hard to see how a flightless bird could make it across the Fauveaux Strait any other way. One of them served as harbormaster at the water taxi landing. He was quite used to people, and came hurrying up to us, as good as saying, “Howdy, howdy, welcome ashore! Say, got any crackers?†Even with almost half of his upper mandible broken off, he could handle a biscuit with great efficiency. Later, at English Bay, where I swam, another trading-post weka even let me feed him out of my hand.
But when we stopped to rest at Cockney Bay, a south-facing inlet, the third weka was quite different. I doubt that he saw many humans in the course of his day. He was working the tide-wrack, shaking out copepods and other edibles. He had no idea what a cracker was, and he kept his distance from us.
As we sat there looking across the water at the black interior hills of Stewart, with a storm coming up out of the empty ocean beyond and this uncanny bird watchfully ignoring us, I’ve never felt so far from anywhere; I’ve never felt so fully the irrelevance of man. There was surely the ends of the earth.
Hiking back through the rain forest (and a cold rain), we heard a pair of kakas cackling devilishly in the treetops, and even caught a glimpse of them: big green parrots rather like keas but not as raffish. They sounded like fiends exulting over us two poor humans toiling through the mud and otherworldy bush. Again, that chill little woodwind tune played down and back up my spine: the world is immense and we are of no importance in it.
We caught the last water taxi of the day back to Oban. When we came ashore, we saw a party of three men and woman arriving after a two-day tramp around Stewart Island. They looked fit, tired, fly-bitten and glad to be back, and God! how we envied them! If we ever go back to Stewart, we’re going on that tramp. After all, when you’ve faced the black flies of Michigan, Te Namu is nobody to fear.
http://www.stewartisland.co.nz/Island_map.htm
My approach when creating that piece was to express that the red guy ain't so bad ya know. Just has a bad rep. The S man loves his beers & boobs as much as the next man.