Kapiti

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 2, 26 February 1945, Page 3

Kapiti

A KO R E RO REPORT

Illustrations for this article by courtesy of the School Publications Branch, Education Department.

Most new-zealanders who have seen anything at all of Kapiti Island have seen it from Wellington’s west coast beaches or perhaps from the deck of a passing ship. Few, or comparatively few, have been on it. That is because it is a bird sanctuary, owned by the Crown, and no one may go ashore there without permission from the Lands Department. When you have your permit it still isn’t easy to visit Kapiti. Three and a half miles of the Tasman Sea separate the island from Paraparaumu Beach, the nearest point on the mainland, and for passengers there is no regular transport. Fishermen who live on a little island just off the sputhern tip of Kapiti will take you. if they can. But sometimes the sea breaks so furiously on Paraparaumu Beach and the steep shore of Kapiti that the journey across would be dangerous ; ’ too dangerous, indeed, for even the most experienced of launchmen. The fishermen land you at Rangatira, a little bay on the east coast of Kapiti with bush-covered hills rising almost sheer behind it. In this bay lives the island’s only regular inhabitant. He is the caretaker. About his house there is a small piece of flat land, behind which the island rises steeply to almost 1,800 ft. at its highest point. The

island is six and a half miles long and in area is less than 5,000 acres. At the northern end there is a flat of about 100 acres, which is part of 500 acres of farm land the Maoris own. The remaining 4,300 acres is vested in the Crown. The land belonging to the Maoris is separated from the bird sanctuary by a stock-proof fence, made necessary because sheep, cattle, goats, and pigs which were loosed on the island many years ago damaged the young trees and other growth and prepared the way for erosion. Now on the western side, where you look out over the Tasman Sea from a height of 1,800 ft., the cliffs are scarred by avalanches and cut by ravines. Once the bush grew thickly there. Now there is none. The bush on the island’s heights suffered, too. When the stock had cleared the undergrowth, gales sweeping in from the Tasman Sea heavily damaged the trees. Even now, when natural growth is aided by careful cultivation, you find huge trees which the winds have torn out by the roots. Perhaps these winds have had some part in fashioning the fantastic shapes of the trees which grow near the summit. Goats caused a great deal of the damage, not only by eating the young trees but by running about on the

steep cliffs and causing avalanches. But all the animals have now been cleared from the sanctuary, except opossums and rats, and these are being trapped. Freed of the animals, the bush, especially on the eastern slopes, has recovered quickly. Most of it is second growth, helped by thousands of trees which the Lands Department has planted. But here and there old trees rata, maire, ■ and matai—huge and gnarled, tell of the vigour and size of the original bush. As the trees and undergrowth have recovered, the birds have multiplied. “ Provide the food and the birds will look after themselves.” This has been the maxim the Lands Department has worked under. And if you happen to wake on Kapiti before dawn of any summer day you will agree that the policy has been a wise one. For half an hour, especially after rain, the noise of the birds makes sleep impossible. The bell-birds seem the noisiest of all ; there are hundreds of them. Yet if you go outside you quickly find that they are probably only a small proportion of the total bird population. Native pigeons, for instance, soar to a hundred feet and drop in a vertical dive almost to the tree - tops. Or perhaps, like fat balls of green and white and purple, they sit and watch you from branches a few feet away. A very foolish bird, the native pigeon, as Samuel Butler wrote in 1863. “ Tie a string with a noose at the end of it

to a long stick, and you may put it round his neck and catch him.” These days, of course, you may do nothing of the sort, since the pigeon, with other native birds, is protected. Amongst the flax on the flat land are the tuis. Hundreds of them, too, their glossy dark plumage shining with green and purplish metallic reflections. They are drinking the honey of the flax flowers. But they are greedy and jealous, and in quarrelling amongst themselves they take off and perform aerobatics no airman would dare dream of. Green and red parakeets, white-eyes, white-heads, native cuckoos, and fantails —numbers of all these birds contribute their own distinctive notes to the continual chorus. With them, too, is the robin, for one member of which family Butler seemed to have a special affection. “ When one is camping out,” he wrote, “ no sooner has one lit one’s fire than several robins make their appearance, prying into one’s whole proceedings with true robin-like impudence. They have never probably seen a fire before and are rather puzzled by it. I heard of one which first lighted on the embers, which were covered with ashes ; finding this unpleasant, he hopped on to a burning twig ; this was worse, so the. third time he lighted on a red-hot coal ; whereat, much disgusted, he took himself off, I hope escaping with nothing but a blistered toe. They frequently come into my hut. I watched one hop in a few mornings ago, when the breakfast things

were set. First he tried the bread—that was good ; then he tried the sugar—that was good also ; then he tried the salt, which he instantly rejected ; and lastly, he tried a cup of hot tea, on which he flew away.” Butler, of course, was writing of the little black-backed, yellow-chested fellow then found in the South Island. The North Island robins, which were the ones noticed at Kapiti, have slatecoloured chests and certainly showed

no signs of the curiosity and impudence which Butler noted in the southern members of their family. Along the steep track which leads to the summit of the island, you may perhaps find a weka. When we came across one up there it looked in the dim light of the bush a little like a kiwi. Apparently it was as much interested in us as we were in it, for it came out from under a tangle of roots to inspect us at close quarters and stayed while we photographed it. Of the kiwis we saw no sign, though we

tried to surprise them at evening along the bush track. They are there, however —small and larger grey ones and small brown ones. At the northern end of Kapiti is a lagoon, to which thousands of ducks wisely repair in the shooting season. Once one was left behind, and it has lived there since, perhaps the quaintest of all the seekers of sanctuary. The caretaker has called it "Hoppy” because it has only one wing and one leg, a

disability which, however, has evidently been no insuperable handicap. Kapiti to-day, then, is an island of bush and birds, undisturbed by human habitation and the perquisites of trade and progress. But its story was not always like that. You may remember that it was once the stronghold of the Maori chief, Te Rauparaha. He captured it in 1823 and from its shores carried war to nearly all the tribes in the southern half of the North Island, and to many in the Sounds area in the South.

Against him his enemies once launched a great amphibious operation. Two thousand fighting men drove their war canoes into the tide that rips and eddies round Kapiti. And the tide had an important effect on the outcome of the battle. According to one account, an extra large wave'overturned the leading canoe and others crashed into it. Seizing the opportunity offered in the confusion which followed, the defenders rushed in and routed the invaders.

Another story of the time would seem to make Hinemoa’s swim from Mokoia Island, in Lake Rotorua, look like child’s play. A Maori woman is said to have swum four miles from Kapiti to north of Waikanae. And, as if that were not enough, one narrator adds that she carried a child on her back ! Any one who has watched a launch leave Paraparaumu for Kapiti will understand what that swim meant. The boat is first caught in a strong rip which carries it northwards. Then, in the middle of the channel and again near Kapiti, the current changes.

Europeans came to Kapiti early. And this, perhaps, was one of the reasons why Te Rauparaha chose it as a stronghold. Here he could obtain from traders the muskets he needed to keep his supremacy over the surrounding tribes. Cook saw .Kapiti as he came out of Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770. r “ About nine leagues to the t

north of Cape Ti erawitte and under the same shore,” he wrote, “ is a high and remarkable island . . . This island ... I have called Entry Isle.”

Not many years after Cook, traders and whalers were calling at Kapiti. The traders wanted flax and also dried human heads, which were worth as much as twenty guineas each, to them. The whalers had at least two shore stations on Kapiti and others on the nearby islands. One, on the island

called Tokomapuna, seems to have been noted for the discipline and efficiency with which it was conducted, in sharp contrast with the freedom in which most of the whalers lived. The whaling was very profitable in the early “ thirties,” but the whales soon became less plentiful and the number of ships fewer. Relics of those days, however, can still be seen. Rusted trypots lie upturned on the beach at Rangatira and on the small islands off the coast and there are still signs of the houses the whalers lived in.

When Colonel Wakefield arrived in New Zealand in 1839 to bargain with the Natives for the sale of land to the New Zealand Company, his ship, the “ Tory,” anchored off Kapiti, and Te Rauparaha was one of the chiefs who boarded the “ Tory ” for the negotiations. Colonel Wakefield gives this description of him : —

“In person Raupero is not conspicuous among his countrymen, his height being rather under the average. His years sit lightly on him ; he is hale and stout and his hair but lightly touched with grey. His countenance expresses keenness and vivacity, whilst a receding forehead and deep eyelids, in raising which his eyebrows are elevated to the furrows of his brow, give a resemblance to the ape in the upper part of his face, which I have remarked

in many of the Natives. He was cleanly dressed in the ordinary mat and outer blanket worn as a toga; slow and dignified in his action ; and, had not his wandering and watchful looks betrayed his doubts as to his safety, perfectly easy in his address.” Wakefield visited the little island off Kapiti on which Te Rauparaha lived. " A miserable house,” he wrote, “ tabooed for himself and his wife, with one end parted off for his son, offers no' temptation to his enemies nor calls forth the envy of his rival allies. Near it are piled cases of tobacco, of cotton goods, and of various objects which he has begged or borrowed from the masters of various vessels . anchoring here. These are covered with dead brushwood and narrowly watched by his slaves. He seldom stays long in any one place, but goes from settlement to settlement, often in the night, to avoid any design on his life from his foes on the main . . . Notwithstanding the many bad qualities of this old man — his blustering, meanness, and unscrupulous treacheryhe

possesses some points of character worthy of a chief among savages. He is full of resources in emergencies, hardy in his enterprises, and indefatigable in the execution of them.” To-day this smaller island, little more than a mile in circumference and shaped like an obtuse cone, is a nesting-ground for gulls. Round the stone breastworks which Te Rauparaha built, grass and flax now grow high and there is nothing more to disturb the peace than perhaps a fight between a seagull and a tern. Kapiti already has a memorial from this war. It is a seat made from stones carried from the shore and set beside the track at Rangatira. It is opposite a camp site used before the war by a Wellington family interested in birdlife. A member of the family was killed on service with the Air Force, and the seat, surrounded by newly planted trees, is in memory of him and his Air Force comrades. The last line of the inscription reads :— " For them the bell-birds chime and the robins trill a requiem.”