Mon 22 Nov - Ulva island, Akers Point (Day 0)
We were up and about early-ish to make the most of our 'free day' in Oban. We'd all read about Ulva Island as the place to go, so off we headed, a short walk over a hill to Golden Bay where the ferry left from.
The ferry was a cute little boat, the boarding passes were mutton scrub leaf with nice writing on the back. Soon enough we were at the Ulva Island jetty, milling about and figuring out what to do. There are a series of walking tracks through the island in a rough loop, that took us through wonderful untouched forest with so many birds flying about. Angela sighted an incredibly rare Tīeke (South Island Saddleback) flitting about.
The tracks took us from beach to beach as well, to see weka running about fossicking for bugs and suchlike. There were weka chicks that were so cute! No seals to be seen but plenty of mussels on the rocks.
After a couple of hours we'd sucked the marrow of all the tracks and our return ferry appointment was looming. So back to the jetty we wandered. It started to drizzle at this point but we were warm enough under our jackets.
Back at Golden Bay we had lunch in the little shelter by the jetty. Then it was time for our second destination of the day. A local pointed us off in the direction of Akers Point with something about cutting through the golf course. It all made sense when we got to the end of the road we were following to find the shoreside track washed away and an impassable cliff face in its place. But a fairway followed around the erosion and we were able to rejoin the track after the no 5 green. The course was... rustic, with lots of grass mulch on the fairway and a green that was pretty well like the fairway but with slightly shorter grass. It'd still be quite something to say you'd played that course though.
Soon we were approaching Harrold House, when Stacey let us know that her great great ... grandparents were the original occupiers! The Pākeha side of her family got a lot more mention on the signs than the Māori side which miffed her a bit. Still, the old stone cottage, where her ancestors had raised 9 or so children, was delightful.
We followed the track on and on to Aker's point, via some houses and interesting old machinery out front. We had all the seasons - sun! Cloud! Showers! More sun! At last the now automated and modern lighthouse loomed into view and there we were.
By the time we got back to Oban, we'd walked significantly further than any of our actual hiking days. Off to the pub for dinner, then an early night in anticipation of our upcoming travels.
Tue 23 Nov - Oban to Port William Hut (Day 1)
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| Trail map (DOC) |
9:30am saw us up, packed, a bag left with the backpackers to look after, eating scrambled eggs at the pub, and off.
Our tramp started with a slightly interminable walk along sealed road to Lees Bay. It must have been a couple of hours but it seemed to last forever. At last we reached Lees Bay and edged around the Mamaku Point conservation reserve - a little known pest-proofed peninsula that is thriving.
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| Off we set |
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| On we go |
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| Lee's Bay |
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| The track is nice |
Today's walk was fairly straightforward, mostly following the coastline and dropping us onto the beach from time to time. We stopped at Māori Beach for lunch and to look at the old sawmill that had been left behind over a century ago. It's fascinating what was done to try to make a living in the most inhospitable places.
It was a short distance to Port William Hut, and in spite of our relatively late start we were there before 2pm. What a great hut! Reasonably full with people hanging about on the grass outside and at the beach just in front.
Rakiura huts have a bed bug problem, that they seem to have got on top of but they weren't taking any chances. Most of our stuff stayed outside, on the porch, wrapped in plastic (I'd bought pack liners just for this).
I discovered a part completed wasgij puzzle in the hut, and spent quite a bit of time on it. A good way to decompress. (Angela noticed, and guess what I got for christmas?)
Our husband-and-wife hut wardens were lovely and somewhat eccentric. We first got a long lecture on how to use a camping stove without burning down the hut or setting ourselves on fire. Then we got a really good set of hints for the evening about how to spot kiwi. We tucked into our Backcountry Meals having cooked them very carefully and in compliance with the safety instructions. Angela had boil-in-the-bag MTR Indian meals with rice on this trip as an experiment - and absolutely loved it. The slight increase in weight was more than made up for by the massive uplift in taste and flavour. I think that's her go-to easy vegetarian tramping food now.
After dinner we wandered down to the campsite, 200m or so from the hut, to get away from the crowds and hopefully see some kiwi. We celebrated Stacey's birthday with some little bottles of liquor that Callan had brought in. Were there kiwi to be seen? No, there were not. It was a beautiful evening though so a wonderful excuse to sit in the dusk and quietly chat.
Wed 24 Nov - Port William Hut to North Arm Hut (Day 2)
Today got off to a cracking start as Angela sighted a white-tailed deer on the way to the toilet. It was pretty tame and just hung around the hut. Cool.
Over breakfast we witnessed a stove disaster, as someone using a borrowed stove managed to snap the spork they were stirring with, which catapulted their dinner onto the bench. Luckily they've followed instructions from last night and were cooking well away from the edge of the bench and standing back. Risk mitigations right there.
We somewhat chaotically packed up along with everybody else on the porch. (More on that later). Today we were ascending to a mighty high plateau, towering ... 180m above sea level. Just an 11km day again, but it did take us all day because of the mud we found. The track was well built and maintained, but you can only do so much when you go through swamp. I discovered the trick of following the line of the track through the mud, and hoping to find the fabric and plastic netting that was used to give the track some resilience. If you stayed on that you were okay. If you fell off it, or it just wasn't there, then the mud was deep.
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| Packing up |
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| Lush! |
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| Mud |
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| Splosh |
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| Yes, mud |
Andrew and I were very happy to have leather boots and gaiters. We kept our socks clean and dry for the whole trip and could just splash through the deep puddles that everyone else had to pick through. My irrational distaste for gaiters is well known but I may just have had my prejudices broken down by this trip. Can I change?
Near the midway point we found a couple of temporary huts used for track maintenance. Interesting how they do this. They build a foundation and platform for the huts, then simply helicopter in the hut itself and tie it down. Much less work and easy to then move huts about as they're needed.
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| Temp hut for lunch |
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| The midway buoy. With the boys. Har har. |
There was also lots of old cast iron milling equipment in evidence, including boilers for two huge log haulers. The old wire rope followed our track for quite some distance.
It was quite a relief when North Arm Hut appeared. We made use of their boot washing station and again, wrapped our gear in plastic and left it outside. This hut had had a major infestation and they had gone hard to eradicate it - stripping the bunkroom back to framing and rebuilding it after a thorough fumigation. Every nook and cranny had been sealed with silicone. Bed bug monitoring traps were everywhere. I felt pretty safe.
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| The last descent to the hut |
Then, as we were wandering about before dinner, we sighted a pair of white tail deer. They were incredibly tame. Callan got within 3 metres of them and they just couldn't care less. They wandered around the campsite near the hut, then down to the hut itself, to the delight of all the occupants.
This was the point where I realised that in the chaos this morning, I'd managed to not put my puffer jacket into my backpack. It must have been still sitting on the porch, mixed up with other people's repacking, when we left. Gah! There had been quite a bit of water taxi traffic to and from the hut the morning we left, so I hoped against hope that I could be reunited with it in Oban.
Thu 25 Nov - North Arm Hut to Oban (Day 3)
Another shortish day today, with a little bit of mud but not nearly as much as the day before. We were out by 11:30am! There was still a reasonable few km of road walking to get us to the pub and lunch though. Andrew and I found long grass and a stream to mostly wash our boots off and arrived in Oban with relatively clean gear.
I called in at the DOC centre in Oban and was delighted to find that they had my "sleeping bag" (puffer jacket) neatly tagged in their lost property bin. Wonderful!
Another delight awaited when we collected our bag from the backpackers. I tentatively enquired about how much a shower would cost us - after our Punakaiki experience of $12 shower fees (as a nice bait-and-switch after paying them hundreds of dollars for car relocation) I assumed the news would be bad. "Oh, you were staying with us before you did the track, weren't you? Just go have a shower, no problem." Another tick for the amazing Stewart Island Backpackers.
Our Rakiura adventure was nearing its end. After a well earned lunch and drinks at the pub, we wandered across to the ferry terminal. The freight boat was in so that gave us a bit of entertainment, watching an eclectic collection of stuff from cars to windows to beds to ride-on mowers come off the smallish boat with a built in crane. It seemed like chaos at first glance but the crew were well experienced and knew just how to unload each item the most efficiently and could drop things straight onto waiting trailers when need be.
After another fast but gentle crossing we were back in Bluff, reunited with our cars and blissfully unaware of the local knowledge about regular break-ins and vehicle thefts there. We parted ways for now with Callan and Stacey and were back on the road again.
Rakiura is such a special place. Angela in particular is super keen to go back and spend more time exploring the longer routes on the island. I regret not exploring Southland more in my teens when I lived in Invercargill and had so much opportunity to. It's so much harder/more expensive/more time consuming to get down that way from the North Island. But, I think we'll be back again soon.
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