Going off the grid just the break we all need - Steven Joyce

The MV Flightless is an ex-Navy vessel now used by Fiordland-based Pure Salt for charters and conservation expeditions. Photo / Supplied For Sunday Travel - July 21

OPINION

I’m one of those people who races to get everything done before Christmas. The last fortnight is always a blur of lists and chores that need to be wrapped up before the end of the year and the family descends.

We host my father and brothers and sister for Christmas each year and that always involves a vain attempt to have the place ready for their arrival.

I’m also a news junky. I have been since childhood, and that addiction only intensified during my time in radio and politics. And I run my business online. I couldn’t do it any other way. The internet was made for people such as me. I hadn’t been offline for a week since I secured my first email address.

So imagine my discomfort as this Christmas loomed along with a long-planned daddy-daughter trip to Fiordland in the week before the big day. The concept of the trip was great, but what seemed like a good idea back in March was looking distinctly impractical by early December.

This year, some organisations I work with decided to make extra special attempts to squeeze some important decisions into the last week before Christmas. More than once I asked myself whether I could actually do this trip.

Dusky Sound on the southwest coast of the South Island is very remote. The number of people living there could be counted on the fingers of both hands. While the helicopter ride from Manapouri to Shark Cove is only 20 minutes or so if the clouds are co-operating, if you had to walk out it would take eight to 10 days.

Our charter vessel has a choice of steaming north or south for supplies – it’s 10 to 12 hours to Bluff and about 10 hours to Milford Sound.

Most importantly there is no internet and no broadcast radio. Once the helicopter clears that first ridge the signal dies out. It did and that was it. The mad scramble was suddenly over.

We landed on the upper deck of the MV Flightless, and readied ourselves for adventure. There were 16 of us, 12 guests and four crew. The Flightless is one of seven inshore patrol vessels our navy built in the 1980s and hardly used. She was refitted as a charter vessel by her new owners and is ideal for her current role, very sturdy but comfortable. Her original name was the HMNZS Moa and there is a crest honouring that history on the galley bulkhead.

What followed was an amazing week of kayaking, walking, swimming, and snorkelling in what must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I may have eschewed the swimming, except for one involuntary time, and I gave the snorkelling a wide berth, but that gave me more time for kayaking, and ensuring we had enough time on land to explore the edges of the amazing forests.

I last kayaked 30 years ago in Doubtful Sound, just “up the road”. The mental pictures of that day stayed vividly with me, but Dusky did them justice and more. With their impossibly high cliffs plunging into deep fiords, the Sounds are truly nature’s cathedrals. Paddling silently across the glassy surface of Wet Jacket Arm, you get a sense of the scale of nature and the insignificance of self. It is breathtaking.

The Dusky Sound system as a whole is huge – the largest in New Zealand - with some 700 islands, including New Zealand’s seventh largest, Resolution, which is just a bit smaller than Great Barrier. Resolution stretches across the front of the fiord from Breaksea Sound in the North to Dusky itself in the south, separated from the mainland by the Acheron Passage, through which the occasional cruise liner incongruously passes.

The islands are home to a prehistoric landscape of podocarp and beech trees layered with mosses and ferns, a tribute to the prodigious rainfall in the region. As our host, Maria, told us more than once, including at a particularly memorable moment of truly horizontal rain as we tried to stand on top of a ridge on Pukenui Island, if you’re not getting wet in Fiordland you are missing the fun. The overall effect is one of an enchanted forest only irregularly touched by humans.

There is wonderful history in Dusky dating back to the early Maori and Captain Cook. Cook found safe harbour in Dusky Sound in his second voyage on The Resolution in March 1773, as he returned from the Antarctic Circle. New Zealand’s earliest known photograph was also taken in Dusky Sound.

But the big story today is conservation, and in particular how to get rid of the stoats from some of the key islands to ensure the survival of New Zealand’s endemic native birdlife. There are traplines everywhere, on Resolution, Coopers, Mamaku and so on.

Some are managed by DoC and others by private operators, but everyone works together to try to hold back the tide of predators. There are predator-free life rafts such as Pukenui and Breaksea; but stoats are good swimmers and never far from potentially re-invading them.

The kaka are making a comeback in Fiordland thanks to conservation efforts. Photo / Karina Cooper

There have been some wins, notably the kaka, the tieke (South Island Saddleback) and the mohua (yellow bush canary). Progress is being made re-establishing the kakapo, kakariki and of course the kiwi. We didn’t see a kakapo on Pukenui, but we did see a booming bowl, a perfectly formed basin of dirt at the top of the island where the male kakapo “booms” and waits for the ladies to walk up the hill.

This is a story of loss, too. New Zealand’s ground-hugging birds have proven no match for introduced predators such as the rat, the stoat, and the kuri before them and Dusky is the front line in the battle to save them.

I helped Maggie Barry set up Predator Free 2050 in government days and remain an advocate for the cause. But there is a difference between being in favour and doing the business. Our hosts at Pure Salt are dedicated guardians of Dusky and their stories of the work drew me back to the time of my zoology degree.

I remain of the view that one of the best things we could do for the future of this land is to find a way of getting rid of the introduced predators back to the main divide and beyond. The scale of the challenge is immense.

There was of course some internet connectivity on Flightless. The crew have an Iridium connection they can use, and early on I made a few fruitless attempts to procure the password. My lack of connection to the outside world and the accompanying withdrawal symptoms became a running gag.

However, by early on the third day I’d let it go. In this wondrous environment, the need to know the latest news seemed a bit random - and endless social media shouting matches about the state of the world sadly pointless.

There was no news at all over the week, just the twice-daily weather reports from Meri Leask at Bluff Fisherman’s Radio. Of an evening, we all chatted and played cards. We also slept early – each day was big.

I came back more relaxed and more at peace with the planet. We all did. I have no plans to permanently disengage (to the disappointment of some no doubt) but I’ve learned to value some time off the grid – whether for days or hours. I hope you can do the same over the break. Happy New Year!

Steven Joyce is a former National Party Minister of Finance and Minister of Transport. He is director at Joyce Advisory, and the author of the recently published book on his time in office, On the Record.