Joys of Wellington 9: The DOC staff on Matiu/Somes Island, going out of their way with weta and a welcome

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In the middle of Wellington Harbour is Matiu/Somes Island, sitting like a brooding whale, often admired but not often visited, which makes it a truly special place, a taonga. Formerly an animal quarantine station and before that a prison camp for unfortunate “enemy aliens” in both world wars, today it is a protected wildlife reserve managed by the Department of Conservation and easily accessible by several detouring trips daily on the ferry that runs between Eastbourne and Queens Wharf.

We visited today by the ferry. It was a typical late-autumn/early winter Wellington day with a brisk though not freezing southerly wind, scudding clouds, occasional drops of rain but mostly fine.

Aside from the tranquility, the scenery and the wildlife (mostly birds being visible but also a tuatara under a log and a little blue penguin in a specialy built box), what made this a special place was the DOC staff who live there and go out of their way to make your visit special.

Our ferry was met at the wharf by Jo Greenman, one of the two full-time DOC staff who live on the island and maintain it. One of their jobs is to ensure arriving visitors go through their bags to ensure they don’t have any mice or seeds or other things that might cause havoc in this now-pristine environment, which she did with a good deal of humour in the Whare Kiore (DOC translates it as “quarantine station” but to my literal mind the sign reads “rat house,” wonderful!).

Jo’s spiel at the wharf might have been gone through a thousand times before but it seemed genuinely genuine, something that was confirmed to us much later when we were walking along one of the trails and Jo came up on a quad bike, leapt off and displayed, in her hands, a huge fat Cook Strait giant weta and a big green gecko she had found and brought to show us. The weta was the biggest I have seen. The gecko kept biting her hand as she showed it off to the photography club group we were with. You don’t have to do something like this to meet your job description. You do that to go beyond what visitors would ever expect. You do it because you love your job and want to share it.

What a day, and a place, to treasure, when you meet someone as welcoming and informative as was Jo and the other DOC people there – another showed us where a tuatara was hiding under a branch.

If you’re planning a visit, and I recommend it, take a picnic lunch and wear clothing to keep out the southerlies.

Matiu/Somes Island is a gentle place to visit. The paths are not particularly steep and they are well-formed. There is a century-old lighthouse on its south cliffs, still working, guiding ships into the harbour. The barbed wire fence of the wartime prison camp remains, though the buildings inside are much newer, from the former quarantine station.

This is an island with many centuries of history. Many iwi used the island as a strategic pa in Te Whanganui a Tara before Te Atiawa moved in long before the Wakefield settlers took it over in 1839 and called it Somes Island after Joseph Somes, the Wakefield Company’s deputy governor. The Maori name Matiu is named after Kupe’s daughter, who he allegedly left there before leaving for further exploration. In 1997, the Geographic Board gave the island the dual name Matiu/Somes Island to acknowledge its Maori-Pakeha history.

Near the ferry wharf are a number of groundlevel wooden boxes built as havens for the little blue penguin, the world’s smallest penguin. You can lift the roof and look inside to see if one is inside and there was one today. The gorgeous cute thing looked terrified, but I doubt if DOC would allow visitors to look at them that way if there was any harm involved. Even so, I shut the lid on its frightened eyes straight away and declined to invade its space by taking a photo.

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