Up With The Lark

Forest and Bird, Issue 309, 1 August 2003, Page 20

Up With The Lark

PAT BASKETT

meets author

NEVILLE PEAT

and his alter ego.

he author Neville Peat feels very much at home on a headland overlooking the Otago harbour. With a good pair of binoculars he can spot the albatrosses wheeling above Taiaroa Head. Further up the road at Portobello is New Zealand’s oldest marine laboratory, due to celebrate its centenary next year — and Neville Peat would like to be there to honour his great-uncle, Lake Falconer Ayson, who set up the place in 1904. That forbear was chief fisheries inspector, better known for having introduced salmon to South Island rivers. But Neville Peat’s Otago roots go even further back — to 1853 when Aysons first arrived on the peninsula. ‘And here I am, looking out over the same harbour, he reflects with a certain wry amusement. Apart from the beauty of the place, why would he, his wife Mary and daughter Sophie want to live anywhere else? This corner of New Zealand — from Christchurch south — has provided Neville Peat with subject matter for 20 of the 30 books he has written. Best known perhaps are the natural history series Wild Central, Wild Dunedin (which won the Montana Natural Heritage Award in 1996), Wild Fiordland and Wild Rivers — which he wrote with Brian Patrick of the Otago Museum and which are published by the University of Otago Press. For the same publisher Neville Peat wrote books on the Catlins, Stewart Island and Wanaka, described as ecotourism guides because of their information on the areas’ ecology and natural history. Another title, published last year, is Southern Land, Southern People, a book to accompany the Otago Museum’s permanent exhibition of the same name which opened last August. Neville Peat was involved in the museum display from its initial concept and wrote the text for the exhibition. Its aim is to provide a history of life in southern New Zealand and it has, he boasts, our largest fossil, a sea serpent or plesiosaur

called ‘kaiwhekea katiki’ It was discovered by chance on the east Otago coast about 20 years ago by an amateur fossil hunter chipping away at a Moeraki boulder. The exhibition also offers evidence that crocodiles once inhabited some of our waterways during warmer times — you can believe or not the provenance of a piece of bone about three centimetres long which Neville Peat says is part of such a beast’s jaw.

His assurance on these subjects derives not from years spent in academe but from his work as an investigative journalist — spurred by his love of natural history and of his wider backyard. Neville Peat began his working life as a reporter on the Dunedin Evening Star. After four years he moved to Cape Town where he was a shipping editor for two years. That stint whetted his appetite for travel and he took up an opportunity to sail to South America. Then, after another spell back in Dunedin, he spent a year on an assignment with Volunteer Service Abroad as editor of the Tonga Chronicle. It was a seminal experience, he remembers, which ‘reinforced my identity as a white Pacific Islander’ On his return he set about learning to speak Maori. Later he wrote a book about Tokelau which he calls

New Zealand’s Farthest North. In the mid 1970s he spent two summers in the Antarctic as information officer and photographer for what was then the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. From what he learned there he produced his first two books — Ice on my Palette, with artist Maurice Conly (Whitcoulls, 1977), and Snow Dogs — the Huskies of Antarctica (Whitcoulls, 1978). His next job was with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs as information officer for overseas aid programmes, a position that kept him on the move as well as writing and taking photographs until 1985. By then, with another three or four books to his name, he was ready to give up employment and write for himself. There has been no shortage of topics. One which gave him particular satisfaction was his work on New Zealand’s nomination of our subantarctic islands for World Heritage listing — achieved in 1998. The information contained in the comprehensive and formally-worded document he produced is soon to appear in a more accessible form — as what he calls ‘a new kind of guide book’ Two trips to those islands gave him a good understanding of their ecology and he hopes this book will fulfill several purposes — as guide, souvenir and reference for researchers. The challenge of acquiring that breadth of knowledge — and of making accessible information the ordinary reader finds daunting — is an exercise he says he revels in. ‘A project like that one allows me to canvas the whole spectrum of life, from the rocks up. In the subantarctic the ocean is all important as well. Relationships and interdependence can be fascinating. It’s what ecology is all about. Tourists may not be the main buyers of that particular Peat book since visitor numbers are strictly limited to 600 each summer. But people are not the islands’ biggest threat. That, he says, is posed by

illegal fishing and the damaging effects of nets and lines. The issue of tourist access to many of New Zealand’s most precious areas is a contentious one and as a writer of ecotourist guides Neville Peat has a particular viewpoint. With visitor numbers at two million he believes we’re not yet at capacity and that the country can handle another million without overwhelming certain spots — the exceptions being Milford Sound and possibly the Abel Tasman National Park. New Zealand could benefit, he says, by ‘not playing the numbers game. What he’d like to see is a ‘value-added’ approach to tourism whereby two million tourists might stay 10 or 14 days instead of three million coming for only five days. In support of this approach he envisages the setting up of what he calls environmental learning centres and expanding the network of smaller ecotourist operators. ‘Tm thinking more of the kind of experience which changes peoples’ values and beliefs and gives them a new focus in terms of caring for the environment. That’s a rather idealistic approach, he admits, but when you look at a particular group who come in large numbers — over 60 year-olds, often educated and in search of new information, who are impressed with

how wild New Zealand can be — then he’s perhaps not so far off the beam. And he has some idea of what he’s talking about through his experience of joining American cruise ships as their guide for the two weeks passengers spend exploring the country. In 1998, Neville Peat was elected to the Otago Regional Council and now chairs the biodiversity committee, a body with $200,000 a year to invest in protecting pockets of private land — patches of wetland, bush gullies, areas of saltmarsh and sand dunes. "We value the common, the richness as well as the endangered and the special, he says. ‘To me, unless you're sustaining the natural and the physical, everything else, including economic gains, jobs, incomes and lifestyles, falls by the way: Water management is a special interest of his and it’s an issue of concern in Otago which is the second largest user of irrigation water in New Zealand, accounting for 21 percent of the national take. Canterbury, at 58 percent, is far and away the largest user. Together, the two regions account for 79 percent of the national irrigation take. Neville Peat says that in Otago some rivers, such as the Taieri, are already over-allocated. ‘We have to drive more efficiency and we have to limit allocations,

And there’s still the problem of inappropriate land use. The rapid growth of vineyards in central Otago needs to be anticipated and controlled according to an assessment of the natural values of the area. Where rare plants and certain invertebrates have been able to tolerate grazing, he says, they won't survive the conversion to grapes. ‘We need to protect certain areas with the help of DoC and local government initiatives and by using covenants. If he needed any reassurance on these matters, Neville Peat would undoubtedly consult his alter ego, an elusive character named the Lark who features in The Falcon and the Lark and in Coasting: the Sea Lion and the Lark. A mixture of fiction and a more lyrical recounting of fact than his other books allow, these works enable him to indulge the writer’s yearning for a certain creative freedom and, at the same time, to feel he is reaching people who don’t normally read nature books. He has a third of this series in the pipeline, in which the Lark shares his knowledge of the kokako, although details are hazy. ‘T have yet to interview him, Neville Peat confides with a grin.

— PAT BASKETT

is an Auckland-based feature writer.