Kiwihorizons: Going South - Stewart Island

This year we were going to hide from Christmas on Stewart Island, the “third” NZ Island. It lies south of the South Island, has around 400 permanent residents and is mainly bush. It is famous with tourists (and locals) in that it offers the best chance to see kiwi (the bird) in the wild. Recap: kiwi are large flightless birds, NZ’s icon, and highly endangered due to introduced pests that attack the birds and or their eggs/chicks and/or destroy their habitat. Kiwi are also nocturnal, so chances of seeing one of the few that remain on the main islands are pretty rare, although you do occasionally hear them at night deep in the bush.

Stewart Island also lies far enough South and isolated that it has a reputation of bad weather (although really everywhere in NZ it can get pretty nasty). This is especially bad when your crossing over on the ferry, which runs as long as the waves are less than 4 meters high.

Furthermore because of a unfavourable combination of geology and climate, Stewart Island is very muddy. And finally, it is infested with the vicious sandflies, to which apparently Europeans develop resistance over the years, a process that must still be in the very early stages in my case.

All together this led to friends and colleagues exclaiming “Stewart Island! Cool! You know it’s muddy? Can you handle bad weather? Have you bought seasickness pills yet? It is full of sandlfies!” every time we mentioned we were going down there. I always get a bit annoyed when people assume that I can’t handle mud, because, hello, I am a soil scientist. As in “iieww, you study mud?!!”.

petrified mud

Second, I am from the Netherlands, synonymous with wind and rain, wind and sleet, wind and hail, etc.

Anyway, we got the best possible weather imaginable, and so I’m sure everyone will say “oooh good weather! Well then you didn’t experience the real Stewart Island”. Kiwis (the people) think you haven’t experienced anything real unless it was cold, wet and unpleasant.

On to our adventures. We first stayed a day in the township Oban, which has a pub, a store and a few houses and tour operators. We were immediately aware of gangs and bands of birds that are otherwise very rarely seen, so that was great.

Oban

Rata, NZ christmas tree

The next day we boarded a watertaxi to the starting point of our 4 day tramp. On the boat we changed plans after the skipper had made some suggestions. However, this led to the fact that we walked some 25 km in 9 hours (including numerous breaks) through hilly forest and then around pool sized infinitely deep mud pools

and finally over an endlessly long flat until we reached our destination.

Luckily daylight lasted well until after ten so we had plenty time to cook some dinner and venture onto the beach. And there we spotted our first wild kiwi in the dunes. I don’t think there is any bird in existence that matches the silliness of the kiwi. Look how it’s poking around, gets stuck and nearly airborne, at which point it hears us laughing and wanders off.

This was a very magical place otherwise as well, with the waves, the desolateness and the moonlight.

The next day we slept in, wandered around the beach some more, and headed back over the flats.

Saw another kiwi. We then stayed in our tent next to a hut, and I listened to the screaming and coughing of kiwis the whole night. Crazy.

We wandered on over a hill and through more mud

to the next camp site,

and the next day walked out of the bush back into Oban, where we stayed another 2 nights. From the tramping cuisine of freeze-dried stuff and lightweight oatmeal we then sampled the local seafood. Oysters, salmon, blue cod, all absolutely yummy.