To travel hopefully is a better thing....

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
Robert Lois Stevenson

Last week Tony B. sent me an email reminding me that if I parked in the wrong place at QE2 Park in Christchurch, I would be towed away.

No, he’s not so badly out of touch that he didn’t realise I am no longer there, he had just sent out a missive to a group without editing its members. Nevertheless, his kind thought has prompted me to write about how we get around here on Raoul. I have included a short video of our Monday morning commute to work, as it occurred this week.

We have four vehicles on the island – two tractors and two ‘mules’. The tractors are only driven by people with special privileges (hey! I am one – it means I get to drive up and down the airstrip towing a mower for hours on end, getting intimately acquainted with the music on my iPod). The mules are little 4WD vehicles that act as people- and gear-transporters. They can go forwards or backwards - not too complicated - and apparently have a max speed of 40kmh, although this is only hearsay of course.

One of the mules needs a new wheel bearing, which means it cannot be driven until the HMNZS Canterbury returns late next month, as we do not keep a supply of obviously needed spare parts in the workshop (I know….go figure! I guess DOC has a tight budget….)

It is a constant source of concern that the roads should remain passable, not least because we may need them to evacuate if we have to. This means they have to be maintained so John, Bas and I have volunteered to do road maintenance and we have used the opportunity to introduce Bas to ‘Kiwi Work Practices 101’. Notice the nonchalant way he leans on that shovel? This took hours of practice.

Most of our work involves shovelling pumice and sand out of one of the ravines and then tootling off to find potholes to fill. We have to keep a wary eye out for drooping pohutukawas as they form a virtual tunnel in sections of our small roading network and can catch out the unwary driver by slowly sagging to the point where the top of the vehicle will collide with a very solid tree trunk.

All our vehicles are very sturdy, but would inevitably come off second best in a clash with a pohutukawa.

Northerly winds and global warming

This morning we awoke to a welcome change – northerly winds. The air temperature was noticeably milder.

It also meant that we had to swing into action with the CO2 sampling programme, which has to be conducted with a not-too-strong and not-too-light breeze moving in off the sea. Raoul Island is part of a world-wide network of sampling sites that contribute data to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the USA.

This is part of a continuing scheme of work begun by Dr Charles Keeling in 1955. He was the first scientist to recognise that the amount of carbon dioxide did not vary from place to place (apart from seasonal variations as trees drop their leaves and return to the atmosphere the CO2 they have absorbed over the growing season).

His insistence on continuing to measure the air samples at remote and unpolluted places has allowed him to construct the Keeling Curve – a graph that tracks the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere; over the years, it climbs almost as steeply as do the walls of our volcano.

His discovery alerted other scientists to the potential dangers of global warming. They surmised that a build-up of carbon dioxide in our air would act as an insulator – the so-called greenhouse effect. One predicted result of this build-up is the wild swings in weather that the world seems to experience more and more frequently.

Ready to hold breath!

Bas and I had to carry two sealed glass flasks down to the beach, stand 10 feet apart, face the wind, hold our breath and open the nozzle to collect the air samples. Apparently the measurement of these samples is so precise that it can be determined whether the air has passed over vegetation or the person holding the flask drank alcohol during the previous evening. This is why we had to hold our breath.

Bas packing off the samples ready to go to the USA

Now we have done our little bit for science, we are able to relax and enjoy the weekend.

Shortest Day - let's get wet!

Not sure why Blogger has this posting timed on Saturday evening - this is the dawn swim we all took on Sunday 21 June. Sunrise here is at 6.45am and we were in the water shortly afterwards. Water temp at the moment is slightly warmer than the air at 19.4C.

It was a refreshing start to the day!

Getting away from it all

Last week Gaye, Gareth and I went across to Mahoe Hut for two nights.

We had two missions – to clear the fern away from the solar panels that power the birdcaller on the track to Smith’s Bluff and to search for and destroy an infestation of mature weeds that had been spotted from the helicopter when the GNS scientists were here recently.

Solar panels for the Smith's Bluff birdcaller

The birdcaller is one of three that have been installed to try to lure some of the seabirds back from the smaller outlying islands. They had pretty much abandoned this place as a nesting location after the rats and feral cats kept wiping out their young, but now that we are free of predators they need to be encouraged back here. Gareth kindly demonstrated the caller for us while we were there – it makes a noise that is uncannily similar to the sound of his sneeze.

Our second mission was to drop down off the main ridge through three old Mysore Thorn sites to try to find a clump of mature Brazilian Buttercups on another ridge across a ravine.

Mysore thorn - mature and seedling stage

Mysore was originally brought here to keep the wild goats out of the gardens and it’s shocking stuff as the pic shows: bristling with needles. Luckily our predecessors have dealt to most of the mature stuff with the big spikes, but the little fellers keep making a comeback as our tally of 131 seedlings shows.

The search and destroy mission went perfectly as per Gareth’s plan. Thank goodness for GPS – we had to bash our way down a near-vertical face, clinging to scrubby bracken, and then ascend the one opposite. It could easily have gone wrong as there were steep bluffs both above and below us, but the GPS told us exactly when to leave the spur and cross onto the slip face that had allowed the weeds to flourish. We walked straight into the weeds plot.

Mature Buttercups are increasingly a rarity on the island as DOC’s cleansing project takes hold. We are much more likely to encounter puny little seedlings than the 4m plants that had settled in comfortably at this sunny little spot, and were seeding prolifically. Some days we cover many kilometres and don’t encounter a weed at all.

This trip was a full day out and my tired body was grateful to get back to the hut and curl up with a book and a hot mug of milo.

As with all of Raoul’s little spots, Mahoe hut has its own flavour.

Mahoe Hut

The piles are a bit loose, so it feels a bit like an earthquake is happening each time someone ventures across the floor. Sometimes there ARE earthquakes, like the one we read about in the hut book that tipped the entire contents of the pantry on to the floor.

The three hut books span back in time to the Forest Service and professional goat and cat hunter days. My favourite weather girl Karen Olsen has an entry in one of them (Gaye sniffed rather unkindly that it records the fact that she couldn’t find her way down to Sunshine Cove from Mahoe Hut).

Pohutukawas -under

Many of the earlier entries moan about getting lost and the #@&* windfalls that have already become so familiar to us.

Pohutukawas -over

One poor soul had to abandon his pack and rifle to crawl up to the hut as he was exhausted and his legs were cramping badly.

Anyway, with mission accomplished we returned to base via Moumoukai, the highest point on the island.

Looking across Blue and Green Lakes to Nugent and Napier Islands

We were rewarded with spectacular views across the crater lakes to the offshore islands out to the north of Raoul and meandered back to hot showers at base.

Two Strange Photos

GNS man Andrew, before his accident. How does he get his legs to come out of his head like that?
Gaye, viewed through the 'cardburner' that records sunshine hours at the meteorological station

Cooking night tonight

With ten of us living on the island, cooking night only comes around once a week or so. It is usually shared between two of us and the roster seems to accommodate vegetarians and omnivores equally.

We have a fine array of cookbooks to provide the necessary inspiration when your turn comes around.

A good proportion of these books come inscribed with loving messages from anxious mums who were sending off sons to what was once a remote all-male environment. They probably imagined them starving in the absence of a maternal figure, so the Edmonds Cookbook was obviously seen as an acceptable surrogate (we have about four of these: not surprising since it's NZ's best selling book of all time). One in this broad 'maternal' set caught my eye- it’s called “ma cuisine” and once belonged to someone called brownie. Spooky. Another is a very early edition of Alison Holst’s “Food Without Fuss” and doesn’t Alison look a mere slip of a girl in the photo on the back cover?

Another I really like is the Rere School Cookbook, 1992. Rere is 45km west of Gisborne and boasts one of the most beautiful waterfalls and the longest rockslide in NZ. The rockslide’s probably been banned by Health and Safety rules since the book was published.

The cookbook is full of great practical recipes like Babies’ Nappy Soakers and Elephant Stew (feeds 4000). However, I hope I am not breaching copyright by sharing the following listing with you:

How To Preserve a Husband
Be careful in your selection. Do not choose too young. Once selected, give your entire thoughts to preparation for domestic use. Some insist on keeping them in a pickle, others are constantly getting them into hot water. This may make them sour, hard and sometimes bitter. Even poor varieties may be made sweet and tender and good by garnishing them with patience, well sweetened with love and seasoned with kisses. Wrap them in a mantle of charity. Keep warm with a steady fire of domestic devotion and serve with peaches and cream. Thus prepared they will keep for years.

Living and working on an active volcano

We have been living and working on the island for a month now.

Raoul Island and the other Kermadec islands are the summits of large volcanos that have been built up on the Kermadec Ridge. This ridge lies along the collision zone of two major structural plates, the Pacific plate to the east and the Australian plate to the west. The Pacific plate is being forced beneath the Australian plate, thus causing the characteristic deep ocean trenches that surround these islands. The movement of these plates has been estimated to occur at a rate of about 7cm per year on average and the earthquakes commonly felt in this area are likely to be associated with the convergence of these plates.*( Volcanic Hazards–MINISTRY OF CIVIL DEFENCE –Information booklet 4,1992).

The island has been shaped by its explosive history. It consists of two main craters or calderas which have been formed due to subsidences immediately after large eruptions. The Raoul Caldera centrally is 3km by 2km and the Denham Bay Caldera approximately 3km long and wide, but this had been flooded by the sea.

Witnessed volcanic eruptions on Raoul have occurred in 1814, 1870, 1964 and 2006. Future volcanic activity and earthquake activity is likely and this is now being more closely monitored on Raoul Island and at other sites along the Kermadec Ridge. GNS (Geological and Nuclear Science) have recently installed new monitoring equipment to assist with the monitoring.

Crater vegetation damaged in the 2006 eruption

For example, a web camera looks down into the crater located from the top of Moumoukai, the highest point of the island, so you can see what the crater looks like twice each daylight hour if you click here. Seismic and temperature measuring devices are located in the Raoul crater and other devices to monitor tsunami activity are installed around the coastline. This information is monitored 24 hours a day back in New Zealand.

Protocols are in place for evacuation in the event of an earthquake or volcanic eruption. We practised an evacuation drill last week.

Emergency evacuation practice

We all packed warm clothes, tents, sleeping bags and gathered up the emergency bins containing such things as the portable generator, chain saws, fuel, food, water, satellite phones and flares.

Duties like our weeding involve searches of most of the island, including the crater. Prior to us entering the crater, John (our team leader) makes contact with GNS in order to obtain a permit to enter it. The GNS team back in New Zealand will only issue this permit if they are satisfied that their instruments show the volcano to be inactive. When we go into the crater either as individuals or in groups, a radio is always carried and we make scheduled radio contact daily at 1000 and 1500 hrs to advise of our position and well being. Weeding in the crater is pretty much like everywhere else on the island (steep hillsides, deep ravines, bluffs and huge windfall Pohutakawas to skirt around) except for the fumeroles. These are deep vent holes and care always has to be taken to look where you put your feet.

This fumerole was found while weeding last week. It was 40cm in diameter and at least 5 metres deep.

Earthquakes and eruptions cannot be predicted. We don’t spend our days worrying about these events but instead make a conscious effort to marvel and revel in our spectacular surrounds.

Also it helps to know that if shit happens, we are as prepared for it as we can be.