It began as I backed my Yeti onto Sealink's Island Navigator ferry, under a beautiful red dawn at Auckland's Wynyard Quarter.
And oh what a trip it was to be.
If you can afford it, perhaps by splitting the cost between friends, taking your own car to this island is a treat. The Barrier is a vast island, taking more than an hour to drive from end to end, with fascinating side roads to explore, so you must have wheels.
Though vehicles can easily be hired locally, taking your own is an adventure in itself. The Island Navigator sails through beautiful Hauraki Gulf scenery, passengers and crew are friendly and you may even spot dolphins or even whales.
You're given the run of the ship, can chat to the skipper during most of the voyage, or retreat to a bench or your car for a nap.
This unsubsidised service transports the tourists, fuel, building materials, refrigerated food and all the sundry additional goods required to keep the island going.
Depending on conditions in the Colville Channel, it takes four-and-a-half hours, transporting up to 28 vehicles at a time. A round-trip is $325 for vehicle plus $95 per passenger (slightly more on public holidays). There's private cars, refrigerated trucks, trailers, boats and motorcycles - with every vehicle packed to the gunwales.
The Skoda Yeti rolls off Sealink's Island Navigator at Port Fitzroy.
Mt Hobson
Driving the Yeti ashore at Port Fitzroy, I checked into nearby into Orama Oasis, the largest accommodation facility on the island (with slightly more than 18,000 bed nights per year).
Orama, which began as a Christian camp in 1962, now hosts retreats and provides camp accommodation for Hillary Outdoors. Recently its cabins and motels have also begun to accommodate visiting movie crews, but members of the public can still get a good cabin from about $45.
Orama and Hillary Outdoors deserve to be in future Yeti Yarns, but on with my petrel quest.
This began with another early start the following day, when I met Port Fitzroy identity Dr Emma Cronin, who is experienced in handling native birds.
Emma Cronin with a black petrel named 'Skoda'
Emma and husband Scott Sambell run the famous Glenfern Sanctuary, a 82 ha property protected by a predator-proof fence.
We began our quest at Windy Canyon, near the centre of the island. This perches less than 200 m below the 621 m summit of Mount Hobson (the highest point of the island).
Trudge through the canyon, along the ridges and up the 900 steps leading to Mt Hobson and you'll be rewarded with views of the Okiwi and Awana lowlands.
The view from the summit of Mount Hobson is outstanding
On a clear day you can even see as far as Coromandel Peninsula and the Poor Knights Islands.
At 7am, we began our slow four-hour ascent to the summit where most of the birds nest.
A lively conversation distracted from the difficulty of the climb, as I picked Emma's brains regarding the black petrels and their survival prospects.
Part Emma's job is educating the next generation about black petrels and their chicks
The Australian born marine biologist is full of admiration for New Zealand fishing industry leaders, who encourage fishermen to visit Mt Hobson to observe the birds.
"Petrels are lovely birds, when you handle them and their chicks they kind of win you over," she said.
"These guys leave the island motivated to do all they can to avoid accidentally hooking them when out fishing."
Emma hopes recreational fishers will take the measures to heart; such as putting bait away, sinking bait rapidly and generally keeping a lookout for birds (see www.southernseabirds.org).
South America
Last September she travelled to South America, where black petrels migrate for part of the year, to help spread the conservation message among school children and professional fishermen there.
There's a vast number of fishing fleets working off Peru and Ecuador, where fishers are equally familiar with the birds called locally "Petrel Negro".
Emma visited schools and got a respectful and attentive response when she spoke to a group of fishers in Peru. They appreciated the fact that somebody had come all the way from New Zealand to explain the black petrels' life cycle. "The birds are protected over there but just issuing fines is not enough," Emma pointed out.
"Primarily it gets back to the need for people to become enthusiastic about protecting these birds. We win hearts and minds when people are given the opportunity to learn more about black petrels."
Nearing the summit, we stopped at several black petrel burrows but birds and chicks were either absent or hard to reach. Finally, Emma located a burrow with an adult inside and pulled the creature gently into the light.
While nesting over summer mother and father birds fly far and wide to catch fish and squid for their single chicks, who wait it out for about five months in their Mt Hobson burrows.
Chicks then begin to come out at night when they are nearing fledging. They practice flapping their wings till ready to jump off a high point for their first flight.
Parents are so full of fish when returning to their burrows that they land heavily.
After visiting their burrows they walk back to a high point, such as a cliff or up a tree, to gain altitude required to take off once more and resume the quest for fish.
It's while walking across the forest floor, or while the chicks are out at night getting exercise, that they are vulnerable to marauding feral cats.
Wild pigs can root black petrels out of their burrows, while rats can destroy chicks but the combined toll taken by pests is outweighed by the number killed by humans at sea.
That's why there's such a big push to encourage fishers to conserve one of New Zealand's rarest seabird.
Once we'd inspected the petrel - whom Emma named "Skoda" - we headed back to the Glenfern Sanctuary, but coffee with Scott was interrupted by a "bird emergency".
A banded rail had been run over and her chicks scooped up and deliver to Port Fitzroy Shop.
Scott dropped everything to pick up the two stressed chicks left at the shop in a bag.
He and Emma painstakingly fed them food and water, then dispatched me on a mercy dash to bird rescue expert, Karen Walker, more than an hour away the south end of the Barrier.
Artist Karen Walker wants to cats eventually banned from Great Barrier
No cats
I drove the Yeti to Karen's home at Schooner Bay, where she soon had the babies settled with other orphaned rail chicks.
It's been a bad year for cats getting these birds and often when they kill a mother rail, somebody finds the chicks and brings them to Karen.
Rails are well camouflaged and can hid from most predators, but cats seem able to sniff them out, she says.
"There's a big feral cat problem on this island and what they do to black petrels is particularly nasty. I've found petrels killed by cats. The birds are too big for the cats to manage, so they pull their feathers out to incapacitate them, or bite their heads off."
On Great Barrier Island, Karen favour household cats being sterilized and not replaced once they die of old age.
Hard to disagree.
The return journey with Sealink was outstanding.
Paul Charman's trip was sponsored by Sealink and Skoda New Zealand.
