Having lived outside New Zealand for a while, I can say that weather forecasting is quite a bit more hit and miss here than, say, Australia or Europe. Something to do with being a small island in a large ocean, I’ll bet. But when the Metservice decided to add a 10 day forecast to their website, it did make me laugh. The forecasting is sometimes wrong on the day they release it. But, despite that, when they are forecasting for tomorrow, they have a reasonable chance of getting it pretty right.
So I was quietly confident that the Saturday forecast of “clearing showers and easing winds” might be vaguely reliable. Even though as I read it on Friday night, it was pouring and blowing. Anyway, the Forest and Bird Lodge on Matiu/Somes Island was ours for Saturday night and I was determined not to miss that. I was going to the island come rain or shine (as long as the ferries were running).
We’d organised a family day walk for Saturday August 14 on Matiu/Somes, and decided a few months out that we would hire the Forest and Bird Lodge and stay the night as well. Our son Toby has had a fascination with Matiu/Somes for years. He calls it Tracey Island (from the Thunderbirds) and we (and his Thunderbird-mad Aunty Sally) do nothing to dissuade him from it. We’ve been meaning to visit for ages and this was a great opportunity.
However, the lashing rain driven by gale northerlies did change the mind of several other families planning on making the trip out to Matiu/Somes. It is hard to take families out in poor weather. Social skills involving stiff upper lips and struggling gamely through all adversity are certainly not fully developed until much later in the teenage years. And the recurring theme that all us parents of young kids have is “Don’t put the children off tramping!”.
So, we waited on Saturday morning at Queens Wharf, with our luggage haphazardly strewn around to avoid the puddles from the recent rain. Another family turned up (but then, they were also booked into the Forest and Bird Lodge with us, so they had a vested interest and knowledge that we had refuge from anything the island could throw at us) and we did have one other person arrive. But they asked more about the coming trip to Nelson Lakes and decided against visiting Matius/Somes this time around.
We boarded the Dom Post ferry (two families of two adults and two boys each) at 10am and enjoyed the fast trip out to the island. We were met by DoC officers and searched our luggage for stowaway pests and listened to some information about the island. Then we walked up to the house and made ourselves comfortable. The house was a well-maintained three bedroom house with excellent facilities. The power is from a diesel generator, so there are three bursts of power through the day while the generator runs: an hour at breakfast time; another hour at lunchtime; and 4 hours in the evening. You can cook with the gas hob/stovetop outside those times, but at 9:30pm when the power goes off and the lights go out – that’s pretty well bed time.
We made lunch and had fun exploring the house. Then we tackled a walk around the island.
It was a family daywalk trip after all. We walked back down to the wharf as a starting point. A day volunteer ranger pointed out a nesting penguin, which was good as despite our best efforts we never got to see another penguin for the rest of the stay. We certainly smelled their presence and heard them a lot. But they proved elusive. We picked up a dead weta to examine more closely and returned it to the scene of its demise. Then we walked back up the hill to the visitors centre, then up past that to the gun emplacements on the top of the island. Can you believe there was no wind at all? So calm and peaceful. Interrupted only by four boys playing soldiers amongst the old fortifications.
We enjoyed the view of Wellington and Lower Hutt from the summit and continued on the Circuit Track around to the lighthouse. The views of the shoreline were spectacular. The sea was so clear and the birdlife was abundant. I peered through Josh’s binoculars at any opportunity. (Thanks Josh!) One of the boys spotted a Giant Cook Strait Weta on the side of the path at one point. It was huge. We all took a good look.
Then, further around, closer to our accommodation, Aidan, Emerson and Duncan found a tuatara nesting under an old, gnarled macrocarpa tree. We used the binoculars then too, to get a good look at a tuatara in the wild. I’ve only ever seen them in glass enclosures before this trip. What a highlight. Wetas and tuatara. I was so excited at the idea of a torchlight walk around the Circuit Track because with this much good luck we’d see flocks of Little Blue Penguins. Surely.
Anyhow, when the evening power came on at 5.30pm, we cooked up a mighty fine dinner. Spaghetti bolognese. I don’t know why, but I never tire of eating it and it always seems such a hit for the kids. Most of the children ate as much as the adults. Must be that good, fresh island air.
After tea we pulled on our warm clothes, and wandered down to the northern end of the island for the 7.30pm Petone Winter Festival Fireworks Spectacular. And, I have to say, I think we had a prime spot for viewing it. It was marvellous. Fifteen minutes of very good fireworks. Then we went around the Circuit Track to spot the multitude of penguins. After a good 45 minutes walking around, we could smell the penguins easily, and hear them cooing (laughing at us?), but saw nothing of them. They were Ninja Penguins. And we must have been elephant tourists. Four young boys didn’t make us the stealthiest of groups. Lucky the volunteer ranger pointed out the nesting penguin down by the wharf so we can say we did see one.
Back to the lodge and our hard family daywalk had us all tuckered out. Two boys crashed immediately, and the two others followed close on their heels. Then it wasn’t long for the parents to follow suit. Come 9.30pm when the lights went out, it was very easy to pass up playing cards by torchlight and go straight to bed instead.
Sunday we packed up and cleaned the lodge, using our precious hour of electricity to get in and vacuum it out. The DoC ranger came and collected our luggage with the trailer and we wandered down to meet the ferry. At some stage during the night the weather had turned from a warm northerly to a cooler, stronger, southerly. In the morning, the shoreline was all murked out with fog around the edge of the harbour, making Matiu/Somes feel even more remote. Still no rain though! We took the boys for a last play around the gun enplacements and then walked down to meet the ferry at 10.40am.
The southerly had whipped the harbour up into a frenzy, but with such a short ride into the city, not even my poor sea stomach could be upset. The boys thought we’d provided them with their very own roller coaster, so their whoops of joy could be heard echoing around the boat with every wild dip.
The trip out to Matiu/Somes was as good as I could have hoped. Despite looking out at the twinkling lights of Wellington, you felt really isolated and cut off from the world. It is a special place so close to Wellington. Go and explore it, either for the day or overnight. We had fun!