Dust on My Feet: Chatham Islands - Forgotten Islands at the End of the World

Sheep in a Chatham Island landscape

It was a warm breezy afternoon. The field of brown grass smelled of late summer. Ahead lay the dusty, gravelled road stretching to a cluster of houses in the distance. I was walking home from school, alone, shuffling along as a child does, poking with my sandaled feet at the dust-covered stones. A car approached and I scurried across the road away from the enveloping dust plume. Ahead I could see the girl with the blond curly hair, a classmate. I walked faster, closing the distance and called out… but then I awoke. It was a dream. I was about twelve or thirteen at the time and had recently read about the Auckland Islands, a group of uninhabited wind-swept islands to the south of New Zealand on approximately the same latitudes south of the equator as southern England is north, in a feature in the New Zealand Herald . There had been an abortive attempt in the 19^th century to colonise the Islands which has always fascinated me. In my dream, my family, along with those of some of my friends and current classmates, had moved to these Islands, presumably to farm, not that my family had ever had a tradition of farming, certainly not on my father’s side. However, it was the dream that remained deep in my subconscious, in that hazy region of memories that linger between childhood and adolescence.

A dreamscape come true - Chatham Island landscape

So it was quite a surprise when, on a warm spring day, I was picked up at the small Tuuta airfield and, as I was driven along the dusty island roads, something triggered my subconscious memory: “I have been here before!” There were plumes of dust, grassy fields with a few sparse wind-swept trees. It was uncanny, this feeling of familiarity, even though I had never been here before. I had just arrived on the Chatham Islands, a windswept archipelago in the South Pacific some 700 plus kilometres to the east of New Zealand’s South Island, and further north than the Auckland Islands of my dream but, nevertheless, still remote, wind-swept, with just a small resident population. I had come over here to work the summer as the driver tour-guide for the Hotel Chathams in the main settlement of Waitangi. This uncanny realisation that I had been here before, albeit in a dream, helped me adapt to life in this small island community.

The sometimes-bleak landscape, with wind-swept trees, of the Chatham Islands

The Chatham Islands, an integral part of New Zealand, is 45 minutes ahead of that country’s standard time and are a reasonably large group of islands with a total land area of 966 square kilometres. The Islands are situated at latitude 44° South and longitude 176° West which should, in fact, place it on the opposite side of the International Dateline to mainland New Zealand. Practicalities when the dateline was decided, led to the adjustment bulge around the Chathams Islands.

The original inhabitants of the Chatham Islands are the Moriori people who, like the New Zealand Maori, are Polynesian in origin. There is still argument as to how long they have been on the Islands. Some historians say they arrived from New Zealand as recently as the 16^th century, citing a lack of earlier archaeological evidence, but Moriori tradition speaks of earlier occupation going back at least a thousand years, very similar to the time that the first Polynesian navigators began arriving in New Zealand. These traditions speak of canoes coming direct from Polynesia and being wrecked on arrival, although there is at least one tradition of a return voyage to New Zealand, which would explain the presence of obsidian, or volcanic glass, found in a Moriori site on the Island. Whatever the truth, it did not happen the way we were taught at school; that the Moriori were the original tangata whenua, or ‘people of the land’ of mainland New Zealand and were driven to the Chatham Islands by the arrival of the more aggressive Maori in the mid-14^th century. This fanciful misinterpretation was concocted from mis-translations of Maori oral traditions by Victorian historians, adopted by the education authorities and taught to generations of young New Zealanders, like myself, for most of the 20^th century. Maybe even now there are some who perpetuate this erroneous myth!

The statue of Tommy Solomon, the 'last' Moriori at Owenga

Europeans first discovered the Islands in 1791, with the arrival of HMS Chatham under the command of William Broughton, who claimed the island for Britain. He named the island after his ship. The Moriori name for the island is Rekohu, or 'island of mists', and the Maori name is Wharekauri, or 'house of kauri', an interesting name as the kauri tree only grows in the northern North Island of New Zealand. Evidently an early Maori sealer settled on the Island and built a house out of the kauri timbers of a wrecked ship – the name was given to the entire Island after the Maori arrived in 1835, with European assistance. The arrival of the Maori was disastrous for the Moriori people, as not only were hundreds slaughtered and enslaved but European diseases killed many others. The Moriori population declined rapidly throughout the 19^th century. I was always taught at school that the last Moriori, Tommy Solomon, had died in 1933 and the race had become extinct. Tommy was the last full-blood, but today there are many of Moriori descent on the Islands and in New Zealand.

My first tour on the Island was with a horticultural group from New Zealand, who had flown in from Christchurch. We set off in the Hotel Chatham's old Toyota bus on a series of day trips, radiating out from Waitangi, the main town on the Island. The Chatham Islands have unique endemic flora and the best known garden plant is the Chatham Island forget-me-not, or Myosotidium hortensia, to use its botanical name. These now grow in gardens in New Zealand and around the world, but the only natural habitat is on these Islands. A big-leaved megaherb, the Chatham Island forget-me-not has a mass of showy blue and white forget-me-not-like flowers in the early Spring. We found several sites where these beautiful flowers grew, resplendent in their natural environment.

Naturally-growing Chatham Island forget-me-nots on the coast near Kaingaroa

At the north of the Island there is a magnificent wetland and beach area known as the Ocean Mail Reserve. The name comes from the ship Ocean Mail which, on a voyage from Wellington to London, was wrecked just off the coast.

Ocean Mail Beach, named after the ship that was wrecked off here in 1877

We braved the cold blustery winds and odd showers to walk through the Chatham Island flax of the wetland area, looking for the small flowering plants endemic to the islands. We found the delicate and beautiful Chatham Island gentian, and a couple of small thelymitra sun orchids, the Chatham Island speargrass which was just coming into flower and the very beautiful blue to purple flowers of the swamp aster, a small shrub daisy endemic to the Chatham Islands.

Flowers of the Chatham Island gentian - Gentiana chathamica - in the Ocean Mail Reserve

Very little remains of pre-European Moriori habitation, but what does is extremely interesting. First and foremost are the dendroglyphs, known as momori rakau or tree-carvings which are unique. These stylised figures were cut into the bark of kopi trees – Corynocarpus laevigatus – the karaka of mainland New Zealand, some 220 to 250 years ago. Unfortunately these old trees are fast disappearing as they reach the end of their natural life. Perhaps representing ancestors, these dendroglyphs are a link to the past inhabitants of the island and the grove at Hapupu has a distinct spiritual feeling to it, as if the ghosts of the lost race still move among the trees. While some dendroglyphs are difficult to interpret, others are quite distinct in form and there is a definite eeriness to the grove.

A ghostly spectre from a past age - a Moriori dendroglyph on a kopi tree at Hapupu Historical Reserve

The other, more permanent, relic of this early civilisation is the cave of the petroglyphs, known as Nunuku’s Cave. These rock carvings are stylised representations of seals which once abounded around the coasts of the Chatham Islands, and were the major food source of the Islanders. Seals were virtually exterminated by the early 19^th century European sealers but the population has since rebounded. Nunuku, for whom the cave is named, was an early Moriori chief who, sickened by the incessant warfare and cannibalism among his people, introduced a code of pacifism whereby:

“...because men get angry and during such anger feel the will to strike, that so they may, but only with a rod the thickness of a thumb, and one stretch of the arm’s length, and thrash away, but that on an abrasion of the hide, or first sign of blood, all should consider honour satisfied.”

He then followed it up with the curse: “May your bowels rot the day you disobey.” This was obviously effective as the Moriori lived in peace for around 500 years, until the Maori invasion of 1835.

Moriori petroglyphs in Nunuku's Cave, Chatham Islands

German Moravian missionaries arrived on the Chatham Islands in the early 1840s and although they made very little spiritual progress among the locals, they did leave behind a legacy of stone houses, the remains of which are the earliest European constructions on the island. In Mission Bay near Kaingaroa, are the remains of the earliest of the German mission houses, but at Maunganui, beneath the great bulk of the hill, is the intact cottage of Johann Baucke, now with a category one listing from Heritage New Zealand.

The 19th century cottage of Johann Baucke, Lutheran Missionary, beneath Maunganui

A more recent European relic is an old Sunderland flying boat, once operated by the RNZAF which struck a rock while taxiing to take off on Te Whanga Lagoon in 1959. As it began taking water, the flight was abandoned and a subsequent survey deemed the aircraft, NZ4111, un-flyable. The Air Force recovered the engines, radio and radar equipment and fuel, and the fuselage and wings were cannibalised by the locals, serving as implement sheds and stock shelters. In recent years, an Air Chathams pilot has undertaken the mammoth task of finding and piecing together what is left of this flying boat, restoring for posterity a small piece of the Chatham Islands' aviation heritage.

The fuselage & a section of wing of the Short Sunderland flight boat under restoration near Kaingaroa

While many people will have heard about the geological phenomenon in Northern Ireland known as the Giant's Causeway, here on the main Chatham Island is a very similar formation. Just known as the Basalt Columns, they are located on a small wind and wave swept section of coast at Ohira Bay. These polygon-shaped columns are some 80 million years old and are of the same basic structure as those of Northern Ireland but, unlike the Irish version, paua in numbers inhabit the wave-splashed kelp fringes of this interesting geological feature.

The basalt columns at Ohira Bay on Chatham Island

Nearby is Port Hutt, a small settlement with a fish factory, whose dominating feature is the wreck of the HMNZS Thomas Currell. This ship had originally been a trawler, but during World War 2 had been converted into a minesweeper. In later years she evidently had been used as a freezer-hulk, before being abandoned and blown ashore in a storm. There was also an old fishing boat named the Betty T anchored, literally, to the Port Hutt wharf.

The wreck of the HMNZS Thomas Currell, a former World War 2 minesweeper, at Port Hutt

Bird-life in the Chatham Islands is, in many instances, unique to these Islands. Probably best-known is the Chatham Islands black robin whose population, in 1979, was just five specimen with just one being a female - Old Blue. Due to a concentrated conservation effort, these little birds now number around 250, all restricted to Little Mangere Island, an uninhabited smaller island in the group. I unfortunately did not get to see this wee bird, but one another bird that was also on the brink of extinction is the parea, or Chatham Islands pigeon. This bird, which in 1990 numbered only 40, is very similar to the kereru, or New Zealand pigeon, but is up to 20% heavier and has a yellow tip to its beak. Again conservation efforts and predator control has been successful in restoring numbers to an estimate of over 650. The Chathams also have their own sub-species of oystercatcher and pipit, and also a number of rare pelagic birds, including the taiko, or magenta petrel, until recently thought to be extinct.

The parea, or Chatham Islands pigeon - Hemiphaga chathamensis

Centrepiece of the buffet at the Kaingaroa Club.

One of the highlights of a visit to Chatham Islands was the seafood buffet at the small but friendly Kaingaroa Club, some 50 road kilometres from Waitangi. Kaingaroa is the second largest settlement on the island and is primarily a fishing port. It was also near Kaingaroa that the Moriori people first made contact with William Broughton's HMS Chatham, with unhappy results, especially for a native called Torotoro who was killed 'defending his fishing gear'. The Kaingaroa Club sits right on the harbour and the gourmet spread put on by the local ladies always includes a large 'packhorse' crayfish. Other delights include a crayfish curry, paua (New Zealand abalone) lightly fried, also a paua and egg pie, smoked eel, muttonbirds (these are from Stewart Island) and ‘doughnuts’ cooked in weka oil. And there is a dessert selection to die for!

The Kaingaroa Club, Chatham Islands

Direction sign to Alzon, France in Waitangi

One day as I was bringing a tour back to the hotel, I noticed a strange yacht anchored at Waitangi. You did tend to notice these things after a while! In the hotel dining room were a group of Lithuanian sailors. They had called in for a feed of fish and chips, before the long, hazardous haul through the Southern Ocean to Cape Horn on their voyage around the world. Just to emphasise the islands remoteness, virtually at the end of the world, is the sign, next to the courthouse in the centre of Waitangi, that points to the little French town of Alzon in Provence, the antipodes of the Chathams, 12,800 kilometres away, straight down through the centre of the earth!