Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage takes a photo of Lyttelton Primary School students in an old gun turret at the fortified Ripapa Island. Photo / Mike Scott
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage takes a photo of Lyttelton Primary School students in an old gun turret at the fortified Ripapa Island. Photo / Mike Scott
It's been a Māori pa and tapu burial ground, quarantine outpost, prisoner of war camp, and heavily-armed fortress to repel advancing Russian, Germany, and Japanese invaders.
And in more recent, peaceful times, it's been a quietly popular adventure spot for history buffs, school tours and sea cadets, with its giant disappearing guns, mazes of underground tunnels, torpedo stores, bunkers, and tales of skirmishes with the fearsome northern rampager Te Rauparaha.
But the ferocious shaking of the 2011 earthquakes, particularly the centralised June and July '11 tremors, saw the historic Ripapa Island on the southern side of Canterbury's Lyttelton Harbour shut down.
Its already rickety wharf was damaged and in need of $100,000-worth of repairs.
Now, after years of work by Department of Conservation staff and Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke, a local Ngāi Tahu marae-based community, the island fortress is again open to the public.
Lyttelton Primary School children joined Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage this afternoon for a tour.
"This site will become a nationally important site because of how much of our dual history it tells," Sage said in front of Fort Jervois' main entrance, topped with stone ramparts, stone slot windows, and rusted steel, armoured shutters.
The fortified Ripapa Island in Lyttelton Harbour has reopened after being damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes. Photo / Mike Scott
The kids were enraptured by the island's remarkable history, especially with its two eight-inch and two six-inch England-made Armstrong hydro-pneumatic disappearing guns.
They were told how the guns were designed to raise above the ground to fire at enemy targets venturing into Lyttelton Harbour before sinking back below undetected.
"This is so cool!" one girl said, running down a darkened stone corridor to the next gun emplacement.
Ngāti Kuri warrior chief Taununu identified Ripapa as a strategically sound, elevated outcrop just off the Banks Peninsula mainland in the early 1800s and fortified it against musket attack.
It saw many bloody battles, including several fierce neighbourly, cannibalistic feuds until Te Rauparaha overran the place during his brutal southern foray.
The island contains various burial sites and in 1998 was declared a special, protected tōpuni site. Visitors are not allowed to eat or drink on the island as a show of respect for its tapu status.
Ripapa Island, with its mazes of underground tunnels and disappearing guns, is popular with visitors, especially school children. Photo / Mike Scott
In the late 19th century, it acted as a quarantine station for immigrants from England who spent months sailing Downunder and were suffering from diseases like scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid and measles.
In 1880, around 150 of Te Whiti's followers were transported from the Parihaka Māori settlement in Taranaki in 1880 following the passive resistance to land confiscation and imprisoned on Ripapa for six months before being sent on to Lyttelton Gaol.
The late-1880s, and the rise of the "Great Russian scare" - triggered by tension between the British and Russian empires in Afghanistan - drove New Zealand to fortify its main ports.
Construction of a basalt stone-walled fort on Ripapa Island started in 1886 and was named Fort Jervois, after former Governor Sir William Jervois, an imperial expert on coastal defences.
Although it never fired a shot in anger, the category-one listed building, complete with its rare disappearing guns, was called into action in both the 1914-18 World War I and the 1939-45 World War II to cover a patch of "dead water" uncovered by those further towards the Pacific Ocean at Battery Point and Godley Head.
A marauding German captain, Count Felix Von Luckner, captured in the final days of WWI, was imprisoned on Ripapa for 109 days, and his signature can still be seen today etched into a wall of one of the island's buildings.
The Department of Conservation took over the fort in 1990 and now hopes that Cantabrians will come explore the newly-opened heritage area.
The rejuvenated wharf is open to the public 24/7 and there are plans to reinstate a land bridge in the future and install a carved waharoa/gateway and pou whenua.
Ngāti Wheke spokeswoman Yvette Couch-Lewis said Ripapa Island, steeped in Māori and European history, represents Aotearoa's rich diversity and underlines the need to "remember where we come from".
