Dusky Sound
Our day began anchored in the sheltered waters of the beautiful Dusky Sound. There was little wind and the sun was in evidence. The Lindblad expeditioneers set off on a series of visits to Astronomers’ Point in Dusky Sound’s Pickersgill Harbor. This is a site of great significance in Captain James Cook’s second voyage of exploration. The great mariner sailed his ship, the Resolution, into Dusky Sound in March 1773, after 122 days in the Southern Ocean. Cook had been searching for any evidence of a southern continent. After such a voyage the sound seemed like a paradise, especially as in those days it was teeming with birdlife, seals and fish. Cook’s men set to shooting or catching and eating as many varieties of the local wildlife as possible. In modern times the wildlife is still present but in much lower numbers. This is not, however, so much due to the activities of hunters, as to the impact of introduced mammalian pests such as rats, cats, stoats and possums.
Richard Pickersgill, one of Cook’s officers, ‘discovered’ the harbor that was given his name while exploring in one of the ship’s boats. The Resolution was brought into this snug refuge and moored to trees on the shore line. A rata tree still protruding over the sea is reputed to be the very one that the crew of the Resolution used as a living gangplank. Cook’s men cleared the point of trees and established an observatory there for the ship’s astronomer, William Wales. One aim of the voyage was to test newly developed chronometers and compare their time keeping through astronomical observations; part of the British Admiralty’s quest to improve the measurement of longitude.
The Resolution’s crew also set up camp on the point, no doubt relieved to be on dry land. The Point became the site of New Zealand’s first brewery, as Cook had boiled down the leaves and branches of the native rimu tree, which with the addition of yeast wort and mollasses was turned into beer. The brew was reportedly quite drinkable with the addition of a tot of rum. Cook and his men ended up spending over a month in Dusky Sound. During this time they met several groups of local Maori and established friendly relations with a family of eight who were living in the area. Even in this remote corner of the country the tangata whenua, the people of the land, had explored and settled long before the Pakeha (Europeans) arrived.
The Lindblad expeditioneers enjoyed the peace and tranquility of Astronomers’ Point and the opportunity to familiarise themselves with New Zealand’s native plants. A few birds made themselves known but the most visible native animal was the biting sandfly. Captain Cook himself described the sandfly, “The most mischevious animal here is a small black sandfly which are exceeding numerous and are so troublesome that they exceed everything of the kind I ever met with.”
After our venture to Pickersgill Harbor the next mission was a visit to a small island used as a seal haul out. A band of New Zealand fur seals was undisturbed by our presence, continuing their busy day of lazing in the sun. Fur seals were once numerous all around New Zealand. The North Island colonies were wiped out in the early days of Maori habitation, but the southern South Island retained a huge population despite frequent hunting by the southern Maori. Sealers, arriving in New Zealand in the 1790s following the establishment of the New South Wales penal colony, wiped out most of the southern seals. Seal numbers are now on the rise again and we hope to see more of them in our travels around the south as we head for Rakiura- Stewart Island.
