Graham Turbott: Year away: Wartime coastwatching on the Auckland Islands

By RICHARD WOLFE*

When German raiders were reported off New Zealand in the early days of World War II, coastwatching parties were dispatched to the new frontline.

In late 1943 Auckland Museum zoologist - and, later, director - Graham Turbott sailed with three others for the subantarctic. Their home for the next year would be a hut hidden among the rata on the Auckland Islands. Nearly six decades later, Turbott's journal has been dusted off and published by the Department of Conservation.

While looking out for the enemy, these coastwatchers also did meteorological and, weather permitting, surveying duties. The Auckland Islands' climate is notoriously bad; the outlook is invariably for wind and rain.

Harsh conditions had erased almost all evidence of a failed settlement there in the 1850s, and in 1944 the men had other salutary reminders of the islands' dramatic past, with castaway huts and wreckage from old sailing ships still littering the shores.

To known landmarks was added Lake Turbott, discovered by the author in a glacier-carved valley. He marvelled at a gravity-defying waterfall, swept up in the wind like a fountain to shower the tussock. Turbott observed the island's rich animal and plant life, from nesting albatross and scavenging skua to beachmaster bull sea lions and giant herbs. And while these coastwatchers spotted no enemy ships, they came under constant attack - from blowflies.

Turbott recorded one colleague who cracked under the barrage, addressing the pests as "blue-arsed maggot-blowing bastards".

Back in the comfort of the hut the men cooked up on their Orion range recipes supplied by an Otago University nutritionist. They sat out the weather and staved off boredom with an endless cribbage tournament, while the author read - and re-read - War and Peace.

Now both a National Nature Reserve and a World Heritage Area, the Auckland Islands are a corner of our dominion few get to visit.

Turbott has compiled a valuable and fascinating record of its natural history and the human side of coping in the roaring forties. Year Away preserves the spirit of the coastwatcher's journal, updating and extending it to further our understanding of a unique environment.

** Book available from Department of Conservation, PO Box 10 420, Wellington.

* Richard Wolfe is an Auckland writer and curator.


Department of Conservation $35