Les Judd watches a humpback whale breaching from a boat offshore from Raoul Island.
Les Judd watches a humpback whale breaching from a boat offshore from Raoul Island.
It's a subtropical island where whales swim by daily in season and native parrots eat grass seeds on the hostel lawn.
Whanganui Conservation Department (DOC) senior community ranger Les Judd couldn't pass up a chance to be seconded to Raoul Island for three months.
"A few of my work mates have been and still rate it as some of the best times of their lives," she said.
Les left Auckland for the largest of the Kermadec Islands in September last year. She was among a fresh contingent of five DOC workers, joining two others who had been there for six months and replacing some who were leaving.
Each team is carefully chosen, to make sure they will all get on. As well as the five DOC workers there were others - scientists, maintenance staff - aboard for the 1000km voyage north on the navy vessel Otago.
Whanganui DOC senior community ranger Les Judd got to Raoul Island by boat.
It was a two-day trip north into semi-tropical seas. The weather was calm and it was fun being a civilian on a navy vessel. The staff were friendly and the meals were fantastic.
As well as people the ship carried a lot of supplies, which were landed at the island's Fishing Rock on a motorised derrick system or flown ashore by the Otago's helicopter.
Raoul Island doesn't have a port. Fishing Rock has steps cut into it and has been its main landing point for more than 100 years. It's only usable in calm weather.
At 3000ha Raoul is the only habitable island in the Kermadecs. It sits inside the 7500 square kilometre Kermadec Marine Reserve created in 1990. It's steep, volcanic and clothed mostly in native pohutukawa and nikau palms.
DOC staff are a constant presence, mainly trying to rid the island of weeds brought by European settlers. The staff live in a large solar-powered hostel, and there are four other huts, all linked by tracks.
Hostel and solar array on Raoul Island.
The hostel has flush toilets and satellite internet. The island has one piece of road, two light utility vehicles and a tractor.
Les and the other DOC workers spent three or four days a week weeding. They started work at seven and were back at the hostel by 3.30 for the long warm evenings.
While Whanganui endured a rainy and windy spring the weather on Raoul Island was lovely. Temperatures ranged from 16 to 24degC every day.
During September and October groups of one to six humpback whales swam by daily. Everyone at the hostel was excited to see them, every time they passed by.
"From the veranda of the house you could hear them blowing or flapping their fins or breaching. It was pretty amazing."
Once, on a trip to the nearby Meyer Islands for more weeding, in a DOC inflatable boat, two whales swam directly underneath.
In the afternoons workers could swim at some of the island's beaches. There were sea turtles and poisonous cone shells and corals in the very clear water.
"It was quite bare underwater, because of the ocean currents, and not how you would imagine a tropical island. But there was still a big diversity of New Zealand and tropical species," Les said.
The snorkelling expeditions were for looking, not touching, because fishing is completely banned in the reserve. That will continue if Government's proposed 620,00 square kilometre Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary is created.
Frigate and tropic birds nest in the Kermadecs. Les got to see some up close, on the ground and in the air. Kakariki wander around the hostel lawn eating grass seeds and quite unafraid. As summer approached seabirds were returning to the island to nest, some in burrows and some in the open.
There were lots and lots of tui.
"They're just constantly chasing each other around."
Les arrived at a time when oranges were being harvested from the gardens of former settler Thomas Bell.
"Raoul Island has some of the best tasting oranges that you can get," she said.
The hostel has a small vegetable garden, mainly for salad greens. Most of the workers' other food is shipped in, and stored in huge freezers and chillers. The seven DOC workers took it in turns to cook the shared evening meal.
Everyone was a good cook and made an effort, Les said. Lots of baking was done. They liked having barbecues on Fridays and one person lit a fire and cooked pizza in the pizza oven.
Les did mainly vegetarian cooking, and tried out some new recipes.
"They were very complimentary guinea pigs," she said.
View from Raoul Island looking toward the Meyer Islands.
One day a week the workers did maintenance work instead of weeding. They could be digging drainage ditches, or cutting vegetation away from tracks.
But weeding was the main task, and mainly in one large plot near two lakes. The island has a range of introduced weeds, including black passionfruit and purple guava. One of the worst was Mysore thorn.
Settler Thomas Bell and family lived on the island from about 1877 to 1913. They kept goats and a garden and sold food supplies to visiting ships. He imported Mysore thorn to use as a prickly hedge to keep goats out of his gardens.
Mr Bell had wanted to claim the island for himself, but it was annexed by New Zealand in 1887. He called it Sunday Island, but the name was officially changed to Raoul in 1939.
The thorny tree species he brought in has spread out from his homestead and gardens in Denham Bay. Teams of DOC workers do grid searches for it, pulling up small seedlings and cutting and pasting the trunks of larger plants.
The weeding is tiring work, and it has to be ongoing.
"You have got the life of a seed bank to take into consideration. If you miss a seedling and don't get back until it's mature it will shed more seeds. Some of the weeds have got seeds with a long life," Les said.
Certain plants are not allowed at all. Cucumbers, for example, because there's a native plant from the same family on the island and diseases from introduced cucumbers could affect it.
Thomas Bell and other visitors introduced rats, cats and goats on the island. It became a nature reserve in 1934 and the last of those introduced mammals were eradicated by 2006.
The Bells are not the only people who have tried living on the island. It also has remains of Maori settlements that date back between 600 and 1000 years. None of them lasted long - possibly due to lack of resources or volcanic outbursts.
Maori called the place Te Rangitahua, and it may have been a stopping off place in migrations from Rarotonga to New Zealand.
With no grazing animals left and no rats to eat seeds the island's undergrowth is thick.
"It makes it harder to get around, but it's as it should be. There are whole thickets of native seedlings in some places. That's something you don't often see on the mainland," Les said.
The Kermadecs are part of a chain of 80 volcanoes that stretch across the Pacific from Tonga to New Zealand.
Raoul Island has been erupting intermittently for the last 4000 years. Its lakes are in the depression formed by collapsed volcanic craters.
In March 2006, during the island's last big eruption, a DOC worker was killed. He was taking the temperature of lake water when the 40 second eruption began - with no prior warning at all.
Staff have safety gear for use in future eruptions. Les and the others were provided with emergency kits that included helmets, breathing masks and overalls.
She said there were noticeable earthquakes about every two weeks while she was there, but they weren't scary. Staff from GNS Science monitor them, and maintain seismic drums that warn New Zealand of tsunamis.
MetService also keeps a weather station on the island.
Raoul is not exactly a tropical paradise, being subtropical, steep and heavily vegetated, volcanic, and prickly in places. But visiting it is a rare treat.
Special permits are needed. DOC no longer asks for volunteers to help with its work, mainly for safety reasons. The Heritage Expeditions tour company visits very occasionally, but its visitors sleep aboard a boat and only make only day trips to the island.
Les' journey back to Auckland in December wasn't as much fun as the trip north on a navy ship. She was aboard the Ranui, a 70 tonne Norwegian ketch that has been servicing the island since about 1940.
The sea was very rough, with wind from the wrong direction. The Ranui mostly had to motor, the trip took more than four days and she felt seasick.
Les returned to take a summer break, then resume her work behind a desk or out in the field in Whanganui. It was lovely to be home, but there were aspects of island life that she missed.
"It's so special to be there, right there with nature and out in the bush every day. That's very rewarding for me," she said.
