Invercargill & Stewart Island

Invercargill

Okay, Fiordland is done with now and for those with no interest in that sort of thing I apologise and promise to tell a few smutty jokes later. But things aren't about to get any better for those people - the majority of the remainder of my trip is all about wildlife.

Although New Zealand has an incredible variety of animals to witness (kiwis, dolphins, seals, whales, sea lions, albatrosses, gannets, penguins and so on), it doesn't have that many indigenous species to boast of. Australia has all sorts of remarkable things like kangaroos, wombats and koalas, as well as all sorts of incredibly dangerous things, but New Zealand has...the kiwi, a virtually blind small chicken sized bird with a long beak that eats worms. For a national icon, it's a bit rubbish. But why?

Well, for once the Maoris are partly to blame for this. The Moa, at the time the biggest bird in the world (flightless of course), were hunted to extinction by Maoris, which isn't surprising seeing as they were usually about 3 metres high and would feed a small army. And seeing as Maoris didn't have the weapons to hunt quicker animals and birds that could fly, you can hardly blame them for going for the easy kill.

But the main problem for New Zealand's wildlife were of course the Pakeha when they started arriving. Not just Europeans though, Australians were guilty too. The introduction of new plants and animals such as rabbits, mice, rats, weasels, possums and stoats, as well as the destruction of habitat (such as burning down entire forests for sheep grazing) had a devastating effect. A classic example occurred on Stephens Island in 1894. The government built a lighthouse and employed a keeper; he in turn brought with him a cat to keep him company. In little more than a year that one cat single-handedly wiped out an entire species of bird called the Stephens Island Wren (this is disputed by some but it definitely killed most of them).

Stories like that can be found all over the country - not quite as good as some of the extraordinary tales from Australia, like the guy who bought the last two living specimens of a species (hamster or something like that) at an auction and then ate them when he got hungry later on - but damning all the same. Many of the animals in New Zealand now are good examples of two wrongs not making a right, such as possums and stoats being introduced to catch introduced rabbits and rats (swallowed a fly etc). But why would they bother hunting for fleet-footed animals like rabbits when they can just eat defenseless native animals with no natural predators? By the way I'm not ranting, just explaining.

Stewart Island is my next port of call - a spot of walking and bird-watching for this non-walker and non-bird-watcher. After that I'm going to check out the Catlins Forest Park to have a look at sea lions and rare yellow-eyed penguins (hopefully), then albatrosses near Dunedin and then with any luck whales and dolphins in Kaikoura.

Ah, but this entry is about Invercargill isn't it. Well, it's a nice place but really not worthy of more than a few sentences. It acts as a base for trips to Stewart Island, so let's get out of here and look at some birds.

Stewart Island

When Captain Cook found Stewart Island he sailed round most of it and somehow decided it was attached to the south island, naming it South Cape in the process. The fact that the ferry crossing takes an hour at a good pace tells you that it was a pretty big boo-boo for a great explorer; it was renamed when William Stewart, a fur sealer, sailed right round the island and mapped its coast and many small surrounding islands.

Stewart Island is well known, amongst New Zealanders anyway, as a bird sanctuary. An aggressive vermin control scheme is in place and on the small but beautiful Ulva Island nearby they've eradicated them completely. In fact, Ulva Island is one of the prime locations in the world for relocating endangered species of birds - they're introducing a rare type of parakeet there soon and people from the States and Japan have already booked themselves in a year in advance to go and have a look. The world of bird watching is very active it would seem. It's also reknowned as a walking and tramping haven, but don't worry I won't be doing much of that - I booked a ferry in the morning with one nights accomodation, followed by a ferry back the following afternoon. Just a whistle-stop visit.

My ferry was pretty much empty but naturally the only kid on it came and sat right behind me - they're drawn to me you see - and her mum played High School Musical 2 on a DVD player at an amazingly high volume, which annoyed me immensely. But it's for a kid so it's okay to irritate everyone on board, whereas if I had my iPod on, even at a quiet volume, I'd get warned and then thrown overboard. It was only for an hour though, a bit choppy in places even though it was a calm day. Stewart Island is quite large but the township in Halfmoon Bay is really quite small, so in no time at all I arrived at my backpackers to find my worst nightmare...a school trip from near Invercargill had come over and decided that out of all the accomodation options in Stewart Island, my backpackers was the best place for them to run amock. They were all in the kitchen - about 30 primary school kids and 10 adults. Give me a break! All the kitchen equipment was in use or piled up for washing up, and the kids were running around and screaming like mad while the adults just sat about and left them to it, all of which helped me make the decision to get out of there pronto and go and see some stuff. I quickly went down to the visitor information centre near the wharf and booked myself a water taxi to Ulva Island.

There are about 5 forest walking tracks on Ulva Island but they all join up and make a kind of figure of eight, so you can do them all without duplication in less than 3 hours. I randomly selected one to start with and in no time at all I found myself trying to tiptoe along the gravel track to get a decent picture of a rare bird - a South Island Saddleback according to my guide book - and quickly realised that this was going to be a frustrating day, for three reasons. Firstly, the birds in the forest can see you long before you see them and they'll fly away before you can get close. Secondly, the gravel track is very noisy to walk on so there's really no chance of sneaking up on one. And thirdly, my camera is in possession of surely the worst zoom in the digital camera world - it's fully encased (due to it being waterproof) and so the zoom can't come out of it, giving me a 3x optical zoom which is basically rubbish so I can't take pictures of things from a long way away.

As well as the Saddleback I also saw the following birds - Stewart Island Wekas, Tomtits, Oystercatchers, Kakas, New Zealand Parakeets and also a few New Zealand Wood Pigeons, the second largest pigeons in the world and boy are they noisy in flight, if one of them takes off nearby without you knowing they're there then you're in for a fright. I lost count of the number of times I'd hear a flapping noise behind me and turn round to see nothing there; despite having no predators and seeing human visitors regularly, these birds are extremely shy and retiring. Except for the singing of course, very soothing and according to my guide is mostly down to the Kakas and Parakeets.

The only bird that wasn't difficult to see was the Stewart Island Weka, which you can find in the forest and on the beaches. In fact I found one of them stalking me on one beach - I walked away from it, looked back and saw it running after me, but when it noticed me looking it stopped running and pretended that it wasn't following me by strolling off to the left. Then when I walked off again and looked back it was still running after me, and again it stopped when it saw me looking. Spooky.

Apparently there are roughly 40 Kiwis on Ulva Island (over 10,000 on Stewart Island as a whole) but these are rarely seen, and unsurprisingly me of little stealth when it comes to walking didn't spot one (I ended up on my backside quite a few times as parts of the track are very slippy). The Kiwis on Stewart Island are unusual in that they're often active in the day - usually they're purely nocturnal - which is why it's a good place to come to spot one. Despite being virtually blind they're masters at not being seen - they blend into the nearby shrubs quite nicely and also build their underground nests several weeks before entering them, to make sure they're camouflaged from day one. Apparently if you see a Kiwi scavenging for worms the best thing to do is stand completely still - it won't hear you and since it's eyesight is so bad it'll usually just walk straight into you.

I actually really enjoyed my time on Ulva Island, it was certainly something different and it's a shame that more people don't come here - the travel dude in Auckland didn't put it on his list (probably a standard backpacker's list). They're probably put off by the tag of 'bird-watching' which implies lots of anoraked people with binoculars, but you don't have to be into it to enjoy this place. To finish off my visit I took a stroll around Halfmoon Bay (after avoiding the school all night and watching South Park episodes with some very smelly Germans), and at 2pm jumped on my ferry. And guess who was on it? Yep, that's right, the school trip. No worries though, it was horribly rough and most of them were throwing up all over each other - true story - and I really enjoyed it. A word to people who don't like choppy boat journeys - don't go to Stewart Island, apparently it's like that most of the time.

I picked up my van from Bluff, which must be one of the windiest places on the planet (second only to the wind tunnel at the HBOS Aylesbury offices on the way into town), and headed back to Invercargill for the night, followed by a quiet day of strolling around in lovely blue skies (a bit cold though), window-shopping and some pretty lengthy internet time.