Remote Chatham Islands experiencing a cultural revival

Carvings in a limestone cave (top) show where Moriori took shelter. Picture / Richard Robinson

Go to Manukau Point at the southeastern tip of Chatham Island, wrote Michael King 16 years ago in his book Moriori, and you have reached the edge of the Earth. From Africa, the human race spread through Asia, through the Pacific area to eastern Polynesia, southwest to Aotearoa, and finally, about 700 years ago, 850km east to the remote windswept island which the new arrivals named Rekohu ('misty sky').

From here, King wrote: "They could go no further. There was no additional destination within reach of canoe technology".

Today, jet aircraft criss-cross the globe, yet still only a handful of the most adventurous or curious get as far as the Chatham Islands.

If we think of the Chathams at all, we imagine tiny specks of land lashed by subantarctic storms, with a few hardy farmers and fishing people wrapped-up against the elements.

That image is not far wrong. Although the islands are on the same latitude as Christchurch they are cooler in summer. Average temperatures range from 7.5C in July to 14C in January.

As their Moriori name suggests, the Chathams are more often than not misty or overcast, averaging fewer than 70 clear days a year. And they are regularly blasted by gale-force southwesterlies strong enough to have bent the trees in their path to permanent near-horizontal angles.

The islands are, however, surprisingly big. The main Chatham Island is our fourth largest after the South, North and Stewart Islands, almost twice as big as the next biggest, Great Barrier. From the main settlement of Waitangi it takes almost an hour to drive on the metal roads to Kaingaroa in the island's northeast corner, and half an hour to Manukau in the southeast.

Chatham Island is remarkably flat, little more than a ring of sandhills enclosing the clear waters of Te Whanga Lagoon, a third the size of Lake Taupo, with a few small volcanoes a little lower than Mt Eden jutting sharply out of flat tablelands in a kind of moonscape.

Two-thirds of the soils are peat, partly decomposed vegetation slowly rotting and occasionally burning.

King quotes a British sailor who reported in 1807: "One extraordinary thing was that in many places the island was on fire. Not a mere surface conflagration, but a steady underground combustion. There are large formations of peat and these, having become ignited, have burned steadily for years."

In this harsh environment, about 2000 Moriori lived at that time by sealing, fishing, collecting shellfish and fern-root and catching birds.

Today there are just 720 people on the islands - 685 on the main island and 35 on the much smaller Pitt Island (Rangiauria) to the southeast. A handful of Conservation Department staff keep watch on some of the islets.

Everyone seems to be related to everyone else.Just seven surnames account for a quarter of the people, and 20 names for half, of the 232 private homes listed in the islands' phone book.

So there's no hope of anonymity on the Chathams. I ordered takeaways by phone one night and said I'd pick up the food in half an hour. When I arrived, the woman running the business in an ageing caravan took my burger out of the warming drawer for me before I had time to introduce myself.

Just as in Moriori times, fishing and fish processing are still the major industry, accounting for a third of the jobs and half the value of production.

Many islanders go fishing on good days and in bad weather work on farms or doing other jobs.

They share their islands with some unique species. About 40 plants, 18 birds and 150 insect species are found nowhere else on Earth.

Conservation Department area manager Alison Davis describes the Chathams as "the seabird capital of the world. It has more seabirds than anywhere else in the world."

We were privileged to see the endangered black robin flying freely around Rangatira, southeast of Pitt Island, where a few birds were transferred in 1983 from a smaller island, Mangere.

 

The rare parea (Chathams pigeon), red-crowned parakeet and Chathams warbler can all be seen in a public reserve at the end of Tuku Rd, which runs southwest from Waitangi.

An even more endangered seabird, the taiko, also nests in burrows in the Tuku Reserve. It was believed to have been extinct for more than 100 years until Whangarei ornithologist David Crockett spotted a single bird in 1978. He helped to found the Chatham Island Taiko Trust, which has introduced trapping and other measures to control predators and built up the number of taiko to about 125.

Rather less effort seems to have gone into conserving some of the Chathams' special human heritage, including Moriori carvings in limestone caves along the western shore of Te Whanga Lagoon and remarkable tree etchings which were once common on kopi (karaka) trees throughout the islands.

But the Hokotehi Moriori Trust bought the 4116ha Kaingaroa Station on the northeast coast of the island last year partly to look after the tree engravings there, and this year the Conservation Department put up signboards at the main site of surviving tree art, Hapupu Reserve just south of Kaingaroa.

A Moriori cultural revival has produced a statue of the last fullblooded Moriori, Tommy Solomon, at Manukau Point, and another memorial to a Moriori man called Tamakaroro, shot by the crew of the Royal Navy brig Chatham in 1791 at Kaingaroa. And this year a remarkable new marae, Kopinga, has been completed.

Kopinga welcomes visitors and sees tourism and conferences as part of reviving its people's economic fortunes. This month it is launching a feast and presentation on Moriori culture for tourists, with an overnight stay on the marae. Tours will be offered to the Lake Taia bush reserve, a remote part of Kaingaroa Station.

The islands' two hotels, Chatham Lodge and Hotel Chatham, and the only motel, Chatham Motels, all offer fishing charters.

Two enterprising couples, Tim and Sarah Gregory-Hunt and Ian and Moana King, offer the unusual experience of being plunged under the sea in a cage with bait to attract the great white sharks which abound around the Chathams.

There is a small museum attached to the Chatham Islands Council offices in Waitangi which includes a replica "wash-through" Moriori canoe and carved Moriori pumice stones. And there's memorabilia from the Waitangi jail, where the Gisborne chief Te Kooti was held from 1865 to 1868.

Since the year 2000, the Chathams have also made a fuss about being the "first place to see the sun". The International Dateline actually deviates east of 180 degrees of longitude specially to keep the Chathams on the same day as the rest of New Zealand, although they have their own time zone, 45 minutes ahead of the mainland.

A Polish sculptor, Woytek, installed a striking set of four figures on top of long poles at the precise point where the sun's rays first struck land in the new millennium on top of Mt Hakepa, a 231m table mountain at the eastern tip of Pitt Island.

Both hotels organise trips to Hakepa, which is at the back of a farm owned by Ken and Judy Lanauze. Air Chathams flies to Pitt Island, but only when it can get at least five passengers together on a clear day.

"You wouldn't believe how much fog they have there, so it's always a feat to get them to Pitt Island. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't," says Chatham Lodge owner John Sutherland.

Despite all these efforts, the Chathams are not likely to be overrun by tourists for a while yet. There are fewer than 100 visitor beds, all on the main island, and in early February the Hotel Chathams was already booked until this month. With no new hotels on the horizon yet, the pristine surf beaches of the islands will remain - as they were for the whole week of our visit at the height of summer - almost deserted. 

CASE NOTES

Getting there

Air Chathams (03 305 0209) runs one two-hour flight a week from Auckland, three from Wellington, one from Christchurch. Standard price is $1006 return, discounted to $704 for groups of eight or more, or as low as $576 if booked in advance.

Tours

Chatham Lodge (03 305 0196), Hotel Chatham (03 305 0048), Seymour Tours (09 489 2597), Star Keys (03 305 0424), Ship 'n' Shore Tours (09 478 1462) and others organise group bookings to get the Air Chathams discount, with organised day trips from the hotels.

Te Papa geologist Dr Hamish Campbell (04 570 4649) leads trips once or twice a year for people interested in natural history.

Hotel-organised Pitt Island tours, $225.

Fishing charters

Both hotels, Chatham Motels & Charters (03 305 0003), Star Keys (03 305 0424) and Chatham Fish & Dive Charters (03 305 0575) run fishing and dive charters for $100 to $120 a person a day.

Accommodation

See Links for more info

Te Matarae farmstay (03 305 0144), Owenga camp site (03 305 0271).