Sunshine Camp

Gaye

This weekend was a long one for us – Vollies’ Day Off– so Gaye, Gina and I went across to Sunshine Camp via Mahoe Hut for the night on Friday.

Sunshine Camp is on the eastern side of the island – this map will show you exactly where.

The camp itself looks a little like a Christmas tree as all visitors seem to have taken it upon themselves to hang at least one stray fishing buoy on the branches of the trees as a commemoration of their stay there.

Sunshine Camp

There are lots of these buoys on the coastline around here, as well as the wreckage of the Picton, which went aground at the campsite, and plenty of other detritus too. Most striking of all the various ornaments are the whale rib and backbone segment which have been propped up against a tree since the whale beached itself there in 2004.

Whale rib and backbone segment

We had a pleasant evening under the stars and set off up the coast, rockhopping, the next morning to make our way the 13 km or so back to the hostel.

Once Were Pukekos

Photo: Gareth Rapley

Pukekos are alternately a source of irritation and great entertainment.

They are rarely popular when they screech outside our bedroom window at 3am and unwanted incursions onto our deck are also frowned upon, as the video in this section shows (note for the SPCA: no birds were harmed in the filming process. Except by each other.)

We have two pukeko families in and around the hostel and in a strange sort of way they mirror the cut of modern day NZ society. First we have Lone Wolf and his consort Boy George, who control the garden immediately outside the kitchen and the front verandah area. These are two lucrative food sources, but they are difficult to defend as they are on opposite sides of the building. We refer to these two birds as our civil union pukekos – they are sleek, well fed, aggressive and upwardly mobile but singularly unsuccessful at producing offspring (Wellingtonians, perhaps?) Alas, physiology is against them.

This means that ultimately they can only lose in a showdown against the more fecund East Side Crew. There are seven of these birds and they have a very stroppy dad, who rushes in to defend his rather thick offspring when BG or LW attack them for trespassing. One of these youngsters is so dumb it inadvertently tried to beg food off Boy George in his own territory. The interaction ended very badly for him.

Attacks usually happen when boundaries are crossed. As with the continent of Africa when it was carved up by the 19C European powers, these boundaries bear no relation to logical demarcation lines and seem to become fuzzy when one of our two blokes is having an off-day or is preoccupied with another hapless attempt to procreate. Basically, Boy George will defend up to the water tray, he will look after the grapefruit tree if he feels like it but the eastsiders venture into the front deck area at their own peril.

Our entertainment is derived from the fact that they do just that with monotonous regularity.

A face-off is signalled by a warning shriek. This is followed by major posturing as the two male combatants stare each other down and try to look as tall and imposing as possible. It is essential at this stage that a bird does not turn its back as this action will precipitate an attack, which takes place when one bird is able to get the jump on the other – literally. They use their powerful clawed feet to rake and slash at each other from a height, and will kill without compunction if the opportunity arises.

Pukeko picking over the carcass of a bird that crossed the line

However, they will also retreat swiftly if it looks as though ‘collateral damage’ is possible, so most fights are just hot air and noise.

Retreats usually involve a show of studied indifference, but from an imagined position of strength. Typically a pukeko will show its rear end to an opponent while pretending to look at the ground for food, but its wing feathers will be fluffed up and tucked back in order to make the bird look as intimidating as it can manage. Size is everything in this game.

Clan loyalties are strong and any altercation will bring the cuzzies rushing over to see if they can get a shot in at a turned enemy back. This is why I think the civil union birds are bound to fail – it is only a matter of time until the eastsiders grow sufficiently to outnumber them.

I watched an unfortunate Grey Heron land close to the boundary of the Workshop Pukekos and almost immediately he was attacked by one of their larger males. Normally this would mean a hasty retreat, but for some reason the heron did not move fast enough and within seconds he was encircled by pukekos, all squawking and looking for an easy hit.

Substitute a few Year 10s for these belligerent birds and it could all have taken place in any school ground in the country.

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