Just two hours away, the Chatham Islands feel like another world. Though part of New Zealand, the motu offers revelation after revelation, as Mike Scott discovers.
Just beyond the dunes, waves crash on to a golden beach, but under the kōpī canopy there’s almost no sound.
The tree trunks are columns holding up a deep green roof.
Walk past them slowly and the bark starts to show faces. Then bodies. Then more shapes. It is almost as if they reveal themselves when the viewer is ready to see.
These are rākau momori, tree carvings left by the Moriori, the first people of Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands.
Our guide, Robbie Lanauze, lets us wander carefully, setting a mood that reflects the sanctity of Hāpūpū, a national historic reserve protecting the impressions.
The shapes and faces are a recognition of Moriori travelling from the Pacific to the Chathams about 500 years ago. They are also telling me I am on an island that is part of New Zealand but unmistakably its own land.
Over three days, I learn the Chatham Islands have a unique environment, culture and people. The land even runs on its own clock, 45 minutes ahead of the mainland.
Travelling here is the closest thing to going overseas without a passport.
Rewind a day, and we meet Robbie at the Chatham Islands Museum, a great place to learn about the islands’ uniqueness.
The building opened in 2022 and is well set out, providing a good understanding of the environment and history before you step into the wilds.
Lanauze is happy to add details you won’t find on the walls.
He is a rare ‘black robin’, the name given to people born on the smaller, southern Pitt Island, as opposed to the ‘weka’, the name for those born on the main Chatham Island.
As we drive along the metal roads to our locations, he shares plenty more unique facts.
Weka were introduced from the mainland and are now a targeted pest, alongside wild pigs, cattle, possums, swans, cats and rats.
It matters because the Chathams are home to one in five of New Zealand’s threatened bird species, including numerous seabirds.
That is not surprising on these easternmost islands, which are the above-water part of the Chatham Rise, where nutrient-rich southern waters meet warmer northern currents.
The mix is ideal for plankton and animals that feed on them, so there is plenty of food in the water for the seabirds, and for the fishing industry, the biggest on the islands.
Looking out at aqua blue water and white-lined waves breaking, someone asks: “Any surfing here?”.
There is, Lanauze says, but it can be “a bit sharky”.
Kōpinga Marae opened in 2005. It looks out over Rēkohu, the Moriori name for the islands, with a 180-degree view through large windows, and panels along the walls show Moriori culture being renewed and remembered.
The ceiling falls in five sections from a central five-sided pou, Rangitokona.
Standing around it, Heidi and Tom Lanauze take us through Moriori history, both tragic and inspiring.
More than 1500 names are etched on the sides of the pou, a record of the Moriori who lived on the islands before 1835.
Then comes the hard swallow. After 1835, when Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga arrived, the number of Moriori dropped to less than 200.
Heidi and Tom belong to both imi and iwi, Moriori and Māori.
For a long time, Moriori were maligned, but the narrative began to shift in the later 20th century. Now there is a rejuvenation and acknowledgment of their legacy, including plans to restore Hāpūpū tree impressions, similar to those we would walk through later.
Rusted cars, machinery and containers are a common sight along the roads, and it’s not that the place is a dump.
On the salt-lashed Chathams, steel corrodes 22 to 50 times faster than inland rural New Zealand. A steel plate that lasts 50 years on the mainland is gone in one.
At Port Hutt, rust browns, blue water, green algae and bush produce a distinct colour mix around the Thomas Currell, a former trawler and minesweeper and the last obvious wreck in the bay.
Nobody out here does just one thing, but it’s mostly necessity, because supplies depend on what the boat or the plane brings.
Lanauze is typical. Apart from guiding, he is a professional photographer and has worked in the fishing industry.
Lois Croon from Admiral Gardens is similar. Her property is a sanctuary where she also runs Kahukura Studio, selling paintings, jewellery and signature forget-me-not ceramics.
The property began as the family home while her husband was fishing out of Port Hutt. There was no power, no running water, with only tilly lamps for light.
She remembers fondly how the family gathered in one room while her husband read to the kids from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down.
“Life here is tough and nothing is easy,” Lois says, “but that’s what makes it beautiful”.
Croon and her husband later bought and ran the Hotel Chathams and the home became a place to bring guests for a barbecue.
Now, with an immaculate home, guests come for drinks, nibbles and a tour of a garden focused on sustaining birds, butterflies and bees.
Bees and their honey are a big deal on the islands, which are free of diseases or mites – one of only two places in the world that can say so.
It’s the reason visitors are asked to leave their own honey at home, to protect the island’s hives from mainland diseases.
Kaai Silbery wears two hats in the Chatham Islands – one is a beekeeper’s veil.
She keeps about 200 hives through Go Wild Apiary which visitors can tour.
The walk with Silbery winds among tarahina, a small native dracophyllum, with views north across the island’s volcanic landscapes.
The hives sit among plants where the bees feed and create a distinct honey. Silbery has developed a high-quality freeze-dried honey product sold internationally.
She also wears a chef’s hat, and is well known for it.
It comes out at Kōpī Bush Retreat, where she cooks a meal from local produce.
Crayfish and mutton share the plate with artichoke and her own freeze-dried honey.
The retreat is worth the detour.
John and Bridget Preece built it on 485ha of farmland and native bush that John inherited, and the off-grid home was featured in an episode of Grand Designs NZ.
Guests can walk through the bush, where kōpī grow among lancewoods and the Chatham Islands Christmas tree, then soak in outdoor baths for stargazing.
It would be a pleasure to soak in one of the retreat’s outdoor tubs as the sun dips and darkness cloaks in, listening to the birdsong and the buzzing, feeling the breeze and the coolness of the night as the stars appear.
Everything in that picture depends on the environment, and restoring it is critical.
That is the job Hamish Chisholm and Mike Bell from the Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust have taken on.
Bell demonstrates one of the traps, a self-resetting stainless-steel unit that pumps out a little lure and counts its kills with a vibration-sensing accelerometer, since possums kick when they die and rats do not.
It fires with a force that keeps hands clear, and the impact on the ground has been impressive.
There are 255 out now, up from 50 at the start, with another 70 off the last boat waiting to go in.
Already the trust is seeing higher bird numbers as fantails flit in the trees over the fence from the farm we are on.
Bell says the Chathams “formerly was probably one of the world’s biggest seabird ecosystems”.
“Before human colonisation, and that’s way back to Moriori, we would be standing on seabird burrows now.”
On a trip to the Chatham Islands, it is clear everything comes back to the unique environment.
It eats steel in a year, feeds the biggest industry on the islands, keeps the bees disease-free and shelters 20% of New Zealand’s threatened birds.
It also shapes the people, who do a bit of everything because the land and the sea demand it.
Protect one and you protect the other.
Checklist
CHATHAM ISLANDS
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch direct to Inia William Tuuta Memorial Airport. Flight time is 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes depending on departure airport.
New Zealand Herald Travel flew courtesy of Air Chathams.