Stewart Island and the Rakiura Track

The ferry ride to Stewart Island is known for its rough seas, but on the day we crossed Foveaux Straight it was as calm as a lake. We fell in love with Stewart Island the moment we stepped off the boat. Any thoughts of moving quickly vanished with the morning fog and a feeling of complete relaxation enveloped us.

Stewart Island is 45km wide and 60km long and has about 27km of road. The roads are concentrated around the only town on the island, Oban, and the rest of the island is designated a reserve. As a result of the large reserve the bird life on the island is better than almost anywhere else in New Zealand.

We celebrated a quiet Christmas at a hostel with other travelers before starting our first adventure on Stewart Island, the Rakiura Track. It is the shortest of the New Zealand Great Walks and can be done in two or three days. We chose to do it in three days to maximize our chances of seeing a Kiwi. We started the hike from Oban and walked on roads for about 7km to the official start of the track. From there we hiked out to Port Williams Hut. The area surrounding this hut is supposed to be the best opportunity on the Rakiura Track to see a Kiwi so we wandered around outside until 11:30 trying in vain to catch a glimpse of the shy birds. Unfortunately we only saw a couple of possums.

 

The second day from the Port Williams Hut to the North Arm Hut was a short, easy walk through regrowth forest. We passed a couple of old steam powered log haulers and spotted a few Red Headed Parakeets and Kakas along the way. We decided not to stay up looking for Kiwis because of our failure the night before. Soon after falling asleep we were awakened by a Kiwi’s piercing call. At the time we were too sleepy to get up, but we certainly regretted that in the morning.

Our last day of hiking from the North Arm Hut back to Oban was also very short and most of it was on an old logging road that runs out to Kaipipi Point so we decided to make it longer by walking Ryan’s Trail at the end of the day. We were happy that we did because Ryan’s trail runs along the water and we got some nice views of the Inlet and saw a couple of Kaka along the way.

The next adventure we had was going out to Ulva Island. Ulva Island is a small island in the middle of Paterson Inlet that is one of the only open bird sanctuaries in the world. There has been an extensive trapping program on the island to rid it of nonnative animals (mice, possums, stoats and the like) and it is now home to some beautiful, rare birds. We took a ferry from Oban to the island and explored it for six hours. We soon found that some of the birds on the island were used to not having predators around and would quite happily approach us. Others were a little harder to spot, but we managed to see almost all of them except the Kiwi.

On New Year’s Eve we went on a six hour, guided kayak trip in Paterson Inlet. Our guide from Rakiura Kayaks took us along the coast out to an abandoned Norwegian whaling base. Along the way we saw a number of blue penguins and our guide picked up a few shellfish for us to eat with lunch. After the trip we walked out to Acker’s Point before returning to town for the New Year’s festivities.

The South Sea Hotel doubles as the island’s only pub and for New Year’s they light a big bonfire on the beach in front of the pub. It seemed like the whole island turned out for the celebration along with almost an equal number of tourists. There was a band playing from the balcony of the hotel and people were dancing in the street well into the night. At midnight there was a huge display of fireworks (actually flares). It was quite lovely to see the harbor illuminated with a red glow.

In the morning we bid a sad farewell to Stewart Island and climbed on the ferry to head back to the mainland. It was a rough ride back across the straight, but some of that could be because we were still recovering from the evening before.



Can you spot the bird?