Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Walks on the Wild Side

Leave a Reply

Wednesday 18 March 2026 (cont’d) – The story so far….

Having wended their scenic way from Te Anau to the scruffy and mural-infested settlement of Bluff, our heroes, Jane and Steve, had braved the elements in a nerve-racking crossing of the Foveaux Strait and had completely confused their reception committee by buggering off to find their accommodation themselves. Now read on….

Stewart Island consists mainly of Rakiura National Park, which is a haven for many species of wild birds, untroubled by the stoats, ferrets, and weasels that humans brought to the main islands (to control the rabbits they also brought to the main islands – sigh) but neither rabbits nor mustelids made it to Stewart Island. It’s not entirely predator-free; there are possums, rats, cats and hedgehogs, and in February 2025, the Department of Conservation (DOC) announced a pest eradication project on the island to address these. One of the species which has thrived on Stewart Island is the tokoeka, or Stewart Island Kiwi, a type of southern brown kiwi that’s nearly as large as the northern brown kiwi. We’d seen other brands of kiwi in carefully controlled environments, and our mission on the Island was to try to see the native species in the wild. Unsurprisingly, more than one company exists to help people on this mission; the one we were booked in with was called Ruggedy Range. Although the Stewart Island Kiwi can be active during the day, our tour was booked to start at 8.30pm.

We presented ourselves at their office at the appointed hour; it was closed and dark, but we remained hopeful that something would happen eventually, and it did. A lady called Furhana emerged and bade us (and five other people who had drifted up in the gloaming) into the office, were she explained how she planned to go about showing us kiwis.

It’s clear that she really knows her stuff and that she had a tried and tested way of maximising the chances of seeing these elusive creatures. Personally, I found her style a rather irritating mix of didactic and scatter-brained, but she made it clear what she was going to do and what processes we were expected to follow. She also gave us lots of information about the birds, some of which we already knew and some of which was new. So, for example, we knew that the female was only just bigger than her egg, from which hatches a chick which is pretty much ready to go and forage for itself; we knew that their nostrils were at the far end of their bill, not at the head end, as this helped them to understand what they were grubbing for. But we hadn’t appreciated that their sight is very poor, their sense of smell is very keen and their sense of hearing very sharp. She also showed us some video footage. One demonstrated how careful you have to be not to scare the kiwi away with unfamiliar noises. Another demonstrated their really weird call. And a third demonstrated their fierce territoriality – they will fight by chasing and kicking an opponent, and can even fight to the death.

We had been given instructions to avoid wearing scented deodorant or insect repellent and to wear sturdy shoes. She also wanted people to wear “quiet” clothes, so my Peter Storm jacket got the thumbs down as I would make unwelcome plasticky rustling noises at the wrong moment. She provided alternative jackets for me and a couple of the others in the group and off we went in her van.

Surprisingly, she didn’t go off into the national park area, but actually stayed on the roads within Oban. The reason for this is that it’s easier for people to be quiet on asphalt than on gravel tracks or forest trails. So she drove around the local roads, using a red light torch to try to highlight any kiwis which might be about, fossicking in the hedgerows or verges. Again, surprisingly, the kiwis would be grubbing around near people’s houses, as this was good hunting for worms and insects. She found one really quite quickly and so we got out of the van as quietly as we could and followed her in line astern as she headed towards the kiwi she’d seen. I wasn’t really sure of when I was allowed to take photos, so I did nothing more than watch whilst the bird – a juvenile, maybe 18 months old – fossicked around, and eventually headed off out of our sight. Furhana then found an older female – probably the juvenile’s mother, given the animals’ territoriality – but this one was too wily for us to get any photos or videos before she disappeared. We went back and found Junior again, and this time we were able to get photos

Head well stuck into the ground looking for food

and even some video.

(Photographic footnote: this was all taken under red torchlight, and I have desaturated the footage so it appears in monochrome.)

This counted as a moderately successful outing (we met someone later who’d seen five the following evening, but still) so we were happy with the evening’s chasing about. It was a perfectly clear sky and the stars had been brilliant in the firmament above us, whenever we got the chance to look up from trying not to fall over in the dark, make too much noise, or otherwise embarrass ourselves; we got to bed just after midnight. Our wildlife adventures on the island weren’t over, though; as we had another tour booked for, well, later that day.

Thursday 19 March 2026 – Lying very close to Stewart Island, Ulva Island is also part of the Rakiura National Park. It’s much smaller than Stewart Island, being just 2.67km², and the bit where punters are allowed to walk is only about a quarter of that area. That said, the island is a sanctuary for both birds and plants, holding species that on the mainland of New Zealand are rare or have died out, and the walking that can be done is a good opportunity to see these. We were booked on an afternoon’s ramble on the island, so I looked out the Big Lens and we set off to meet our guide.

One might have been forgiven for expecting the trip to Ulva Island to start from the Oban waterfront, but no, we had to walk to Golden Bay Wharf, just over 1km from our accommodation. We took the opportunity to have a coffee in the South Sea Hotel

and looked along the Main Street,

(which gives you an idea of the scope of Oban as a metropolis) before embarking on the walk over. One kilometre might not seem much, but this is Stewart Island, so nothing is on the flat,

and we actually had quite a steep climb over a headland to reach the wharf

where eventually our guide, Emma from Ulva’s Guided Walks, joined us, as did a water taxi,

which took us on the five-minute journey over to Ulva Island.

It turned out that we were the only two punters in the group, so we had Emma to ourselves, which was great. She was very knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of the island, and was also a trustee of the island’s charitable trust.

We were bidden to to brush our boots before boarding the taxi, but that was the only precaution needed before going there; and, interestingly, it’s an open conservation area – no special permission needed to visit, no control over the number of visitors. It seems to work OK, because the island is effectively predator-free and the Department of Conservation maintains a sharp watch for any rats which might have swum over from the mainland (they get maybe one a year, but one year the incursion was a pregnant female which meant a lot of work to clear it).

We pottered about for some four hours, wandering over to a cove where we saw a pair of (fairly young) New Zealand Sealions

before heading off on the forest trail

across the top of the island. As well as plying us with a wealth of information about the endemic and native trees and plants (most of which I’ve forgotten), Emma did the usual guide thing, which I envy greatly but can’t emulate, of spotting things I didn’t even know were there, so we saw a decent variety of birds on our afternoon. A couple of the birds, though, weren’t difficult to spot – Stewart Island Robins: a female

and a male.

New Zealand robins resemble British robins in many ways, but the two groups are not closely related. One way in which they are similar is their territoriality; on our walk we crossed between the territories of different male robins, and they emphatically do not overlap. Also, like British robins, they are dead cute and not afraid of people,

and also terrible death-dealing bullies to other, lesser species. Difficult not to find them attractive, though.

What else did we see? Well, some sightings were of species we’d seen elsewhere, such as this Weka, which is however a smaller Stewart Island subspecies,

a local parrot, the Kaka (also a Stewart Island subspecies),

and a Morepork owl

which was tucked away in a very inaccessible corner of a tree. There are kiwis on the island, but we only got to see a burrow,

which might have once been for a Little Blue Penguin, and repurposed by the kiwi.

Some birds have been reintroduced to the island, such as the Saddleback

and the Red-fronted Parakeet.

We also saw some local orchids and a very unusual blue fungus.

We saw other birds, too, but I was unable to photograph them, as the buggers won’t keep still: Yellowheads and Riflemen (the local wren, with a call so high-pitched that it can go beyond human earing). So it was an engaging afternoon and I was pleased with the photos I managed to get.

After taking our return taxi ride back to Stewart Island, we decided to walk up to the Observation Rock Viewpoint, which gave us a nice, erm, view

and then we walked back down into Oban

and rewarded ourselves for the extra effort of all that uphill work by returning to the South Sea Hotel and consuming some of the local produce.

OK, Bluebird is nationwide in New Zealand, but the gin is definitely local there – and very good it is, too.

That was it for our Third Island activities; the morrow would see us take the ferry back to the South Island and continue on our way. We have one more major destination before we head to Christchurch and our return flight to the UK (via Singapore, by the way – our original route through Dubai has been changed). So stay with these pages to find out where we headed next and what we got up to whilst there.

The Third Island

Leave a Reply

Wednesday 18 March 2026 – We could afford to make fairly stately progress southwards because our only dependency was on a ferry whose time had been rescheduled to 5.15pm, and that was a mere 200km away or so. The weather outlook was pretty decent,

so the Southern Scenic Route seemed a good idea. We exited Te Anau past the Fjordland Vintage Machinery Museum,

which was intriguing, but not sufficiently so as to divert us. The scenic route was, indeed, scenic, with some lovely cloud pattern in the hills.

Jane had looked out a coffee stop at the Brunel Peaks Cafe,

which didn’t immediately look promising, but turned out to be a delightful choice – excellent coffee and cake, displays of local art and produce and friendly service.

As we wended our way southwards, we noticed an area where tussock grass had taken over – not something we’d seen before.

Tussocks are normally something you’d only see in alpine areas in NZ, because by and large the lowland areas were forests – not a tussock growth area – until people came and then they converted forest to farmland. So it was interesting to see the tussocks making a comeback where (I assume) farmland has been left untouched for a while.

Our next stop was at the Clifden Suspension Bridge. The name sounds suspiciously like the famous bridge in Clifton, Bristol, in the UK, and actually the NZ one even looks a little like Brunel’s creation.

It was built in 1899 to a design by the Southland County Engineer C H Howarth, and at the time had the longest main span (111.5m) in the country. It’s a pedestrian-only bridge these days. Jane noticed that there were some young things Up To Something on the far side of the bridge, accompanied by much shouting and laughter. In the end, this is what they were doing.

They were wearing safety helmets, and so we supposed that what they were up to was legit; but they were clearly having some fun.

Jane had noticed something else on our route that had piqued her interest:

The Templeton Flax Mill Heritage Museum. All over New Zealand we had heard of the importance of flax to both indigenous and immigrant communities, so we were interested to understand more.

A few words about flax, first. New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) is a completely different plant from that which we call flax in the UK (Linum usitatissimum); delicate, blue-flowered UK flax is cultivated for its fine fibres – used to make linen – its seeds and their oil. In the UK, flax seeds are linseeds: I remember from my childhood, for example, the importance of linseed oil for treating cricket bats to stop them cracking or splintering. New Zealand flax has huge spear shaped, architectural, fibrous leaves, of huge importance to the Maori because of its “flaxibility” (ho, ho). The coarse, strong fibres could be made into rope, clothing, baskets, nets, canoe sails, even; the plant has medicinal properties and food value. Flax plants grow everywhere across the country; it’s amazing that something so easily available is of such huge utility. When the European settlers encountered the plant and recognised its utility, and recognised the similarities between the Maori processing of its fibres and the processing of flax back home, they applied the familiar name of “flax” to this foreign plant.

So, we were intrigued. The Templeton Mill Museum is only active on special Open Days or by appointment, so Jane got in touch with the owners to see whether there was any chance we could see it. They said that they weren’t officially open today but that, since the door was unlocked, we were welcome to look inside!

It’s the only authentic flax mill plant operating on its original 1940s site, showcasing 1860s to 1970s flax processing technology. It was in full operation until 1972, amazingly.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of information inside about how the final flax products are made from the leaves (foreground below)

The process involves harvesting, stripping, washing, bleaching, drying and scutching (a process of removing impurities from the fibres) before the fibres are baled into hanks (background above). Outside the mill, various varieties of flax are grown

and there is a drying rack for the fibres on display.

All of these various stops were pleasant diversions on our journey, which led us to Bluff, where we had to catch a ferry to Stewart Island. This ferry is another exclusive by RealNZ, by the way. We had thought that perhaps we could grab a coffee in the ferry terminal building, but the operation was a bit more basic than that; they operate a car park for ferry travellers and there’s a waiting room, but that’s about it. When we checked in, the chap who helped us suggested we went to “the pub across the road” for a coffee whilst we waited. So we did – sort of. Actually, we’d noticed, on our way in, that Bluff was a very basic sort of town, but it did seem to have a lot of street art. So before we went for coffee, we strolled around for a bit, and found a decent array of murals

and other installations.

There was an artist’s studio/shop called JIMI RABBITZ, with some really bizarre creations,

and (allegedly) the world’s most southerly chippie.

We called into the Eagle Hotel for a coffee

but they didn’t do hot drinks, so we had a cold beer instead. It was a pretty hardcore traditionalist sort of place, with a monosyllabic barman, a dartboard, the rules of Quoits posted on the wall, and other pub games of a more mysterious nature available to play, too.

The time came for us to board our ferry, which was a catamaran type, a bit smaller than the ones we’d travelled on the day before,

and so we trooped on board and took our seats. The skipper gave the usual safety chat and then set off. He said that it was “pretty calm” on the water. If so, I’d hate to be in what he called rough, because on the first stretch of the journey, it felt like the ferry was airborne at times. It certainly crashed around a lot, but he seemed unfazed by it and no-one on board was sick, so maybe this was normal. After a bit everything calmed down and the remainder was a smooth journey (about an hour in total). I noticed, as we headed into Stewart Island, that the skipper had given one of the crew a chance to have a go at driving.

So: Stewart Island, then. Had you asked me, before this trip, how many islands constituted New Zealand, I would have said “two”; and I would have been wrong. There are three main islands, and Stewart Island is that third island, roughly 1800 km² in size. (You’ll remember, of course, that Cook fudged the island issue when he did his charting of the country in 1769/70, when he came up with this chart:

He deliberately left Stewart Island as part of the mainland in order to fool those damn’ Frenchies and stop them sniffing around with a view to claiming the island for themselves. But, as we’d just confirmed for ourselves, it really is an island. 85% of it is a national park and the only settlement is a town called Oban, which is a small place with fewer than 500 permanent inhabitants.

We were due to be staying at the Kaka Retreat. Rather than having to heave al our bags on to the ferry, we had only brought our backpacks and one small suitcase, so, since everything in Oban is close to everything else in Oban we were happy with a plan to walk to our accommodation. On the way I was less than happy, because although the distances are short, the streets are not flat and although it was a short walk it was quite a steep one, so I was glad to get there. There was no reception evident, so we wandered in and Jane was greeted by a woman at the first chalet who simply said “you’re not in this one”. Somewhat taken aback, Jane asked how we found out which one we were in, and was told to call the Bay Motel. She did so, and that’s when we found out that we’d managed to walk straight past the Bay Motel reception committee on the wharf – they had been waiting there with a sign with our names, and a van to take us up to the Retreat. Thank God for mobile phones, eh?

Anyway, the lady in charge came up from the wharf with a couple of other guests who were staying there and showed us around the accommodation. We settled in (yes, Twinings finest Earl Grey was involved) and prepared ourselves for our activity that evening, which was due to start in about an hour’s time….

…and which you’ll have to read about in the next entry. See you there!

Ooh…er…mmm…(Doubtful Sound)

4 Replies

Tuesday 17 March 2026 – RealNZ has an exclusive on tours to the glowworm caves, and it appears that they are also the only operator to offer a tour to Doubtful Sound, which, with Milford Sound, are the two soundest things to do around these parts. So, after a very decent breakfast at Dunluce, we headed into downtown Te Anau, with its takahē sculpture,

and took a coffee before presenting ourselves once again at the RealNZ office on the waterfront for a whole day outing.

The reason that it’s a whole day outing is that Doubtful Sound is basically inaccessible unless you sail up the west coast and enter it from the Tasman Sea. RealNZ have created a different way of getting there by exploiting an approach route set up for something completely else and patching it into a package which takes you from Te Anau via a bus, a boat and another bus to a boat which goes out on the Sound. It’s rather reminiscent of our journey in South America from Bariloche to Puertas Varas, but without the awkwardness of crossing national borders. Here’s a rough map in case it helps understand how everything fits together.

Our first (and last) driver was a very jocular Yorkshireman called Josh. Based on his accent, I wanted to call him the driver from Hull, but annoyingly he came from somewhere near Huddersfield. He took us through some wonderful morning light and weather

to the RealNZ wharf in Manapōuri where our boat awaited us.

This boat took us across Lake Manapōuri (proudly New Zealand’s second deepest lake) for about an hour. It was still earlyish in the day and the wind hadn’t ruffled the waters too much, so to start with there were some nice reflections of the impressive scenery to be photographed.

As I was taking these photos, standing on the rear outside deck of the boat, I was irritated to hear a Brit holding forth loudly to some poor souls near him on his favourite subject – himself. Fortunately, before too long the skipper gunned the engines and I could no longer hear him. Imagine my surprise on returning to join Jane in the lounge, to find that he had glommed on to her for a ~~chat~~ listen. So we were treated to his itinerary around New Zealand, which was quite short because he said his wife wouldn’t let him go for an longer. Frankly, I would have thought that she would have been content with some more peace and quiet. After a while, in self-defence, I went back out to take more photos. Fortunately, it’s generally a very scenic crossing; Lake Manapōuri is considered (by newzealand.com, at least) to be New Zealand’s loveliest lake, and it does have some great scenery.

This boat took us to the furthest reaches of the lake, called West Arm, where, as we approached, we could see some very considerable evidence of a large power station;

pylons to left and right, with, strung between them, cables covering a 1.8km span – that’s over a mile long. By the cables on the right (northern) bank was the external evidence of the power station, which, in its way, was the reason we were able to visit Doubtful Sound by the route we were taking.

At the West Arm RealNZ visitor centre, we transferred to three coaches and were driven the 21km across Wilmot Pass to Deep Cove, at the eastern end of Doubtful Sound. Our driver was a South African called Johnny, who had a very dry sense of humour. For example, on a steep downhill section, he reassured us that the coach’s brakes were tested – once a year, and that test was due to be done tomorrow.

He explained that the road he was driving us on was a key part of developing the huge hydro-electric power station we’d seen, Manapōuri Power Station. The original plan, in around 1969, had been quite radical – simply raise the level of Lake Manapōuri by some 30 metres via a huge dam to merge it with Lake Te Anau and – hey presto! – lots of hydro power available to be generated from this superlakive source of water. The reason to attempt this enormous power generation? All stemmed from the 1955 discovery by one Harry Evans, a New Zealand geologist with Consolidated Zinc Proprietary Ltd, of a 2.5 billion tonne deposit of bauxite in Australia on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula – the largest deposit of bauxite that had ever been discovered. A company called Comalco (now owned by Rio Tinto) was created to exploit its smelting into aluminium, with a smelter near Bluff, nominating Lake Manapōuri as the power source. Without public consultation, the Second Labour Government under Walter Nash signed a deal in January 1960 that would allow Comalco to build the dam and associated tunnels to lead the outflow water to the nearby Waiau River.

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot of people disapproved of this idea, roughly 50-60 square kilometres of native forests and wetlands would have been permanently submerged; but successive governments ignored protest. A book, Heritage Destroyed, written in 1960 by entomologist Dr. John Salmon at Victoria University, advocated an end to hydropower projects that sacrificed the environmental value of the land they submerged, and this was a seed that grew eventually, in 1969, to the Save Manapouri campaign, which became a significant part of the awakening to a realisation of the damage that big business could cause to the environment, not just in New Zealand, but internationally. Environmental Activism was born (which is a Good Thing until its over-enthusiastic application results in, oh, I dunno, a UK £100million cost for a railway tunnel to protect some bats, for example).

Long story short, the dam did not go ahead. Instead, a new plan was drawn up which didn’t involve raising the level of Lake Manapōuri; instead the turbine hall was built deep inside the mountain, some 200m below the lake surface, with water flowing vertically down to several turbines. The new plan did involve drilling a long tunnel between West Arm and Deep Cove for the outflow of the turbines to empty into Doubtful Sound. Drilling was planned from both locations, but it turned out that getting men, machinery and materials to Deep Cove – accessible only by sea – was impracticable and ruinously expensive. So someone, it seemed, piped up with “Why don’t we just build a road between West Arm and Deep Cove? What could possibly go wrong?” Quite a lot, it turned out, as there was a lot of very tough rock to be blasted through, and the eventual cost of the road was NZ$2 per centimetre. That’s $200,000 per kilometre and there were 21 of those needed.

This, then was the road that Johnny drove us along, pausing at a high point so that we could get our first glimpse of Doubtful Sound in the distance.

Having debussed at RealNZ’s Deep Cove visitor hut, we milled around being bitten by sandflies until we were allowed on to the somewhat larger and more comfortable boat which would be taking us around the Sound on a 3-hour cruise, with commentary from a guide.

Again, the scenery was quite dramatic,

but I have to say that once you’ve seen one huge lump of fjord-adjacent terrain covered in rainforest, you’ve pretty much seen ’em all, so it was easier to appreciate the scenery rather than to try to take more photos. A break in the unchanging nature of the view came as we entered the Tasman Sea at the mouth of the Sound.

At this point, the guide explained a couple of things about Doubtful Sound: firstly, because the whole thing has been carved out by glacial activity, it’s a fjord, not a sound (and the same applies, by the way to the rather more widely-known Milford Sound); secondly, the name comes as a consequence of the prevailing winds, which are westerly and therefore blow into the sound. The area was mapped and charted by Cook on his voyages around the islands. Before venturing into the sound, he assessed the risks associated with being blown in by the wind and then becalmed and therefore unable to get out again. Because he was doubtful of the wisdom of sailing in, he christened it “Doubtful Harbour”.

There was a group of smaller, rocky islands beside the rather larger Secretary Island which is the gatekeeper for the Sound.

The observant among you will have seen the brown flecks on the rocks in the photo above. These are members of a permanent fur seal colony which has this area as its main residence.

Lots of guests appreciated this variety in the surroundings and came to view the seals (which are sealions, of course, but you knew that, didn’t you?).

The scenery reverted back to the “cliffs and rainforest” sort as we headed back towards Deep Cove.

At one point we passed a “tree avalanche”. The trees are clinging on to steep rocks with the shallowest but widest of (therefore interlaced) roots. Occasionally, often weather-driven, the cling isn’t enough and one tree comes away, taking with it all the others on its way down.

We had a delicious comedy moment on the way back, too. The cruise featured the pretentious thing where the skipper turns all the engines off and those that wanted to could go outside and appreciate the beauty of the environment with just its natural soundtrack. The guide told us to make all our phones silent and asked that no-one clattered around the boat for the five minutes or so that this lasted. Almost everybody obeyed this, with only one or two idiots walking around to get more photos. Silence reigned. Well, it would have, except for one very young boy. He made quite a noise shouting for his mummy and telling her (and, thus everyone) that he’d fallen down. She managed to quiet him for a few seconds and silence reigned once again until he piped up once more in the loud voice that toddlers specialise in using at the wrong moment: “Mummy, why has the boat stopped?”

Back at the visitor centre at Deep Cove, we milled around for several more minutes, giving the sandflies another chance for a feed. Inside the centre were some information displays, including a couple of interesting ones concerning the power station: a 1-in-8 model of one of the seven turbines, used to ensure correct design;

and a cutaway model showing the various tunnels through which the water flows to drive the turbines.

The turbines are in the yellow chamber (the tunnels to it are access tunnels); the water goes down from the lake, through the turbine and exits stage left above on its way to Deep Cove and Doubtful Sound. As we were to learn later, there’s quite a large amount of water management attached to this power station. It’s important to maintain the levels in Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, irrespective of wet or dry weather, and so there are dams and valves to divert or block flow in the associated Mararoa and Waiau rivers. All for a bit of aluminium; the hydro power doesn’t go to any other users, if I understand it correctly.

The journey back from Doubtful Sound was, unsurprisingly, the reverse of the way out with one exception; Josh, when driving us on the Manapouri – Te Anau leg, put in a small diversion by request of one of the passengers so that we could look at “two wee bookshops”. Whatever image that might have created in our minds, it wasn’t this.

They are the creation of Ruth Shaw, who started out selling books in her one “wee bookshop”; the business expanded and she now has two wee bookshops, and very charming they look, too. We hadn’t time to stop, but it was lovely to see this characterful, colourful, cultural oasis in Manapouri.

And so came to an end our short stay in Te Anau; we had the prospect of a leisurely progress further south the next day with – we hoped – an important date with more wildlife. Stay tuned to see how it worked out.