Tales of Tasman explain great divide

Neville Peat spent more than two years researching the Tasman's history, its climatic effects and sometimes furious moods. Photo / Steven McNicholl

"Oh, just hold on a minute," author Neville Peat says, his voice threatening to trail off amid the surf-like hiss of telephonic static as he describes the view from his Broad Bay study, out across Otago Harbour where a shiny HMNZS Otago cuts its way through the narrow channel.

"She looks really beautiful; she's going past some guys collecting cockles; they are wading and the tide is advanced; there are seven of them ... anyway, sorry about that. Where were we?"

This set of quotes tells a story: Peat, the keen observer; a collector of many details; a man in love with the sea; an author of about 40 books who is aware of the myriad tangents he could take in his craft, should he allow himself to be distracted.

The latest career twist has been lengthy. Turning his gaze from the mountains, fauna and folk on which he based 2008's High Country Lark: an Invitation to Paradise, Peat focuses on another great divide, the Tasman Sea. He describes The Tasman: Biography of an Ocean as his largest project, involving more than two years of research and writing and another year of production. A 2007 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship of $100,000 - our largest literary award - helped cover expenses.

"It's a complex book and one people aren't necessarily going to read from one end to the other," Peat says. "It is a reference work as well as something people can enjoy if they want to get some travel stories or investigate something they may have read in the newspaper."

Since 1986, Peat has published a wide range of titles including regional natural histories, New Zealand guides, histories of the Antarctic and studies of birds. His collaboration with Brian Patrick, Wild Dunedin: Enjoying the Natural History of New Zealand's Wildlife Capital, won the Natural Heritage category at the 1996 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, while Wild Fiordland: Discovering the Natural History of a World Heritage Area, also written with Patrick, was short-listed for the same prize in 1997.

Yet he also enjoys documenting how people relate to the natural environment. Although the first third of The Tasman explains the sea's geological history, its climatic effects (particularly on New Zealand), its fauna and sometimes furious moods, the remainder of the book deals with how humans interact with it, "whether they be heroic types who paddle or row or those who simply love living beside it".

"The first time I went out to sea was in a [30.5m] vessel, the Heather George, which belonged to the MacLeod family, a very adventurous Dunedin family well known in the 1960s for making trips from New Zealand to the United Kingdom and back ... that set me off.

"That was followed by two years in Cape Town as shipping editor on the Cape Argus newspaper.

"All those experiences of the sea gave me a feeling for it."

The view from Peat's house takes in the Portobello Marine Laboratory and the New Zealand Marine Studies Centre, "for which I wrote the displays". The marine lab was initially a fish hatchery set up by a great-uncle of Peat's and has since evolved into "something that means quite a lot to me".

The scientists at Portobello helped with his book, as did other research institutions including Niwa in Wellington and CSIRO in Hobart.

"Looking at the Tasman from a marine science point of view, you realise how complex it is. There are few parts of the world's oceans that have such an interaction of currents. It is a supermarket for marine life."

Much of our weather is shaped to the west. Most of us choose to live on the Pacific coast with its safer harbours and more equitable climate. The western coast, "the weather coast", is by far the less populated side.

Among various recordings of shipwrecks and near-disasters, Peat's book includes a photograph of people enjoying themselves at Australia's Bondi Beach, a reminder that some regard the Tasman as more of a playground than a place of peril.

"Sydneysiders are not as conscious that it is the Tasman Sea as we are. We are hit on a daily basis by weather forecasts that constantly refer to the Tasman Sea," says Peat, who also suggests "the ditch" is as much a unifying force as a barrier between New Zealand and Australia.

"We often [think of the Tasman Sea] as a wild piece of water and from where we get our weather and identity, but it doesn't seem especially wide ... though it is certainly wide enough for us to think we are something different from Australians."

Another image, a stunning Nasa shot which reveals New Zealand's coastline, serves as a metaphor for exploration.

"It is interesting you mention the space station looking down on New Zealand," Peat says. "A few hundred years ago, that was probably how Abel Tasman or James Cook's expeditions were regarded in Europe. There were heading to the ends of the Earth."

In the book's third part, "Coast and Communities", Peat describes a series of journeys he undertook in 2008 in which he documents landforms, ecology and people.

He presents the subsequent chapters in a south-to-north direction, retracing the order in which places were mapped by Tasman and Cook.

"You are looking at about 3000km of seaboard on both sides. I had to start somewhere," Peat says.

"Abel Tasman found Van Dieman's Land [Tasmania] first, so I started there then came across to the South Island ... He went on to the North Island and the Three Kings and away to Tonga.

"That left the eastern seaboard of Australia to be found by Cook, so that's why I did that last."

Peat says early Maori recognised the Tasman as having an identity separate from the Pacific, calling the western sea Te Tai o Rehua (the Sea of Rehua, referring to the star Antares, an important celestial body in Maori folklore).

The relatively sheltered eastern seaboard came to be known as Taitamahine (the Sea of Maidens) and the western side Tiatamatane (the Sea of Warriors or Sea of Valour), reflecting the fact that several ancestral canoes, including the Tainui, came to their final resting places on the Tasman coast.

Perhaps the most moving testament to the power of that body of water is Australian Andrew McAuley's ill-fated attempt to become the first person to paddle a kayak across the Tasman.

McAuley left Tasmania on January 11, 2007; 30 days later, at 7.15pm on February 9, a distress call was received, its co-ordinates indicating a position just 70km west of the entrance to Milford Sound. The words "sinking" and "I need a rescue" can just be heard on the recording.

Despite extensive searches McAuley was never found, although his vessel was. Among its contents was a digital camera featuring the face of a husband and father framed by a bright orange jacket.

It is a powerful image: he is pallid, exhausted and afraid. Looming large in the lens is a monster wave. The Tasman, see.

The Tasman: Biography of an Ocean by Neville Peat, Penguin, $40.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES