Origins
In Ngai Tahu tradition the fiords of Te Mimi o Tu Te Rakiwhanoa (Fiordland) are the raised sides of Te Waka o Aoraki. The tipua Aoraki, along with his brothers Raraki and Rakiroa, came to visit their step-mother Papatuanuku and became stranded when their waka overturned as a result of Aoraki reciting an incorrect karakia before their return to the heavens.
The waka foundered and its passengers were turned to stone: Aoraki and his brothers, Raraki and Rakiroa stand sentinel as the highest peaks of Ka Tiritiri o te Moana (the Southern Alps). Another tipua, Tu Te Rakiwhanoa, carved out the fiords with his ko, with one foot on Ka Tu Waewae o Tu (Secretary Island at the entrance of Doubtful Sound) and the other on Mauikatau (Resolution Island at the entrance to Dusky Sound).
Later still, the great Maori explorer Tamatea, travelling aboard the waka Takitimu, named the broken land ‘Te Rua-o-te-moko’, after the deep gouges etched into the cliffs which resemble the face of a tattooed chief. In the traditional practice of Taunaha Korero (place-naming) Tamatea’s name was conferred on one of the fiords (later replaced by the name Dusky Sound several hundred years later by the European explorer Cook).
Ngati Mamoe first visited and lived in the fiords with Ngai Tahu following several generations later. Over time, landscape features, pa sites, battles sites and urupa carried the names of tupuna (ancestors) and resources in common with the traditional place-naming practices.
Two main ara tawhito (traditional travelling routes) link Fiordland with Te Wai Pounamu/South Island. A sea route linked Piopiotahi/Milford Sound to Murihiku. The pre-eminent pounamu, Koko-takiwai (variety of greenstone), was carried by this route.
The terrain, while rugged, still had places where pa and mahinga kai were established. Sea passage needed safe landing places and tauranga waka/landing places are found up and down the coastline. Islands and coves in Tamatea/Dusky Sound had many names bestowed by early Maori, a number of which described the resources to be found there. Where there were landing places there were nohoanga (living places), fishing grounds and food gathering places. Notable pa and nohoanga occurred in many areas on the Fiordland coast. While prominent headlands were useful for defence, Te Rua o te Moko was primarily visited seasonally to harvest the rich resources found in the many fiords. The rugged topography, the (at times) tempestuous sailing conditions and the remoteness of the fiords did not deter seasonal visits to harvest and process terrestrial and marine kai. Kekeno (seals) were dispatched by the expedient method of hitting them on the nose several times with a patu (club); kakapo were speared or caught in snares; paua (abalone) and koura (crayfish) were harvested by hand or in poraka (pots) and a wealth of fish varieties from hapuka (grouper) to inaka (whitebait) were harvested from the nutrient rich seas of the fiords. These practices occurred for centuries prior to the first visits by Europeans.
During early contact periods with Europeans, contact was made at most significant sites within Tamatea/Dusky Sound including ‘Indian’/Mamaku Island (named so by Cook at his first sighting of Maori living on the Island).
Europeans: Seals, Whales, Land
Fiordland’s first European visitor was Captain James Cook, a key figure in the history of New Zealand. On his first voyage, he mapped the coast, while botanists on board recorded the country’s natural history. Cook’s first voyage provided Europe with its first substantial knowledge of the Maori people. Cook’s own observations, and those of others on the Endeavour, are still valuable sources of information about Maori life at the time of first European contact.
In 1770, Cook was the first to write about Fiordland, though he did not make landfall. From the Endeavour Cook described the fiords, drew the first map and assigned the first European names – ‘Dusky Bay’, West Cape and ‘Doubtfull Harbour’. Three years later, on his way home from the Antarctic, Cook returned, and among his most significant achievements was the charting of Dusky Sound.
This time, aboard the Resolution, Cook entered Dusky Sound, anchoring off the eastern tip of Anchor Island. Cook moored alongside Astronomer Point in Ship Cove, where the expedition conducted important scientific experiments to chart the location of New Zealand. Cook’s expedition named places that were important to them – names that told of what happened. Cook superimposed several place names on the landscape – an historic tracery which recalls Cook’s journey. The names give a sense of life aboard ship – Supper Cove, Luncheon Cove – and what they saw – Goose Cove, Woodhen Cove – and what happened to them – Detention Cove (where the ship was becalmed). Cook met a group of Maori inhabitants in Dusky Sound, startling them at what he named Alarm River (now Seaforth River). Cook’s Tahitian interpreter, Tupaia, could not understand the southern dialect used by the Maori they met in Southland creating a ripple in the otherwise harmonious relationship they held. On 29 April 1773, the Resolution left to make her way up the West Coast.
Eighteen years later, in 1791, the next recorded European visitor, George Vancouver, arrived. Vancouver had previously been to Dusky Sound with Cook, and decided to revisit the site to give his men a rest. His expedition had been charting the Australian coastline. Vancouver visited many of the coves charted by Cook and filled some gaps in the charts. Though Vancouver’s expedition came across several places where Maori had lived, they did not see anyone living in the sound. European explorers noted huts and people at Acheron Passage in 1792, huts at Woodhen Cove in 1791 and 1793, huts at Earshell Cove in 1791, people at Pickersgill Harbour, signs that Maori had lived at Indian Cove, Cascade Cove and Supper Cove, but no other European explorers met Maori living in Dusky Sound.
The first Europeans to kill seals were those on Cook’s Resolution, when seals provided both fuel and food. The first sealing gang in New Zealand landed at Dusky Sound in 1792, marking the beginning of the sealing industry on New Zealand shores. Sealers and whalers were the first Europeans to stay in Fiordland for more than a brief stop and took New Zealand into the trading world. These sealers began the seal slaughter in the south. New South Wales labour regulations in 1805 effectively banned sealing south of Banks Peninsula.
Captain William Raven sailed the Britannia into Dusky Sound and left the sealing gang on Anchor Island. The slaughter began although it was not in sufficient numbers for the sealing trader who was apparently disappointed with the 4,500-sealskin tally accumulated over seven months in Dusky Sound. Sealing did not last long because by 1820 sealers had all but exterminated New Zealand’s seal populations.
In the late 1820s, whalers turned their eyes to Fiordland. Port Bunn, one of New Zealand’s first shore whaling stations was established in Preservation Inlet in 1829 on land acquired through negotiations between the Murihiku rangataria, Te Whakatapuka and Peter Williams, an agent for owner George Bunn and Company.
Williams’ land deal was also the first documentary land arrangement with Maori in the South Island. Williams’ 1829 arrangement was for tenure in return for muskets and gunpowder. There is no record of his thoughts regarding the protection he received as an accepted European under the protection of Te Whakataupuka, the principle rangatira of the Murihiku region. He was in the enviable position of being permitted to stay at Port Bunn without interference from any of the Ngai Tahu hapu; competition from other whaling companies or threat from other iwi.
Te Whakataupuka received the muskets and gunpowder in 1838 and they would play a vital part in Te Whakataupuka’s successor, Tuhawaiki’s, later defeat of Te Rauparaha. Tuhawaiki later drew and confirmed the boundaries of the agreement for the 1843 Land Sales Commission that investigated the pre-Treaty of Waitangi land sales.
In the early 1850s, Captain Stokes and his crew aboard the HMS Acheron surveyed Preservation Inlet and Dusky Sound.
With the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the Crown set about regularising land transactions and completing further land sales with Maori. Fiordland was part of the Crown’s 1853 Murihiku purchase, though it remained isolated and largely undisturbed. The boundary extended from Piopiotahi (Milford Sound) east to Kaihiku and Tokata on the east coast – the whole of the land south of a line from Milford Sound to Tokata or Nugget Point (the southern point of the Otakou purchase). Ngai Tahu disputed aspects of this purchase for over 130 years before resolution of their claim in 1995.
Other Visitors: Pests, Nature Conservationists and Tourists
People have been drawn to the wild beauty of Fiordland since its discovery by Europeans. Explorers wrote of the grandeur, artists painted the fiords – John Buchanan’s 1863 painting of Milford Sound is an iconic image of New Zealand. Milford, over 160 kilometres away from Tamatea/Dusky Sound, was a star attraction by the 1880s. Summer cruises on the Union Steam Ship Company’s ships ran between 1877 and 1910. Cruises stopped abruptly in 1910 when the ss Waikare hit an uncharted rock near Stop Island in Dusky Sound. Regular cruises did not begin again until the late 1920s.
In the 1890s, Fiordland’s isolation was breached in a more destructive manner. The origins of the problem lay in Southland, where in the mid-1880s, in an effort to curb the rabbit plague, mustelids (stoats, ferrets, weasels and the like) were introduced. Opponents warned of the potentially devastating effects on New Zealand’s birds. By 1888, the impact of mustelids on birdlife was evident. By the 1890s, the predators moved beyond Lake Te Anau into Fiordland. The numbers of kiwi, kakapo and whio (blue duck) went into a sharp decline. The Government put forward the idea of nature reserves, identifying Resolution Island in Dusky Sound as one potential native flora and fauna reserve in 1891.
Resolution Island, along with most of the small islands of the West Coast Sounds, was gazetted as a flora and fauna reserve in 1891, leading the world in such conservation efforts. In January 1894, the Government appointed Richard Henry as caretaker and curator of Resolution Island. Henry lived on nearby Pigeon Island with an assistant and a specially trained dog. Henry transferred birds from the mainland to Resolution Island, again a pioneering effort in conservation. He built a pen near his house to keep the birds until they were moved to Resolution Island (Richard Henry’s Bird Pen, Category 1, List No. 7171).
Henry’s pioneering photographs and detailed notes are significant early records of bird behaviour and conservation in New Zealand. Tragedy came in 1898 when visitors to Facile Harbour reported seeing a weasel (probably actually a stoat) on the beach. Henry himself spotted one on Resolution Island in 1900. Resolution Island was no longer a haven: there was no point transferring more birds there. Henry later moved to Kapiti Island, a bird sanctuary near Wellington, to act as curator there.
Fiordland became a national reserve in 1904, the largest such reserve in the country. The reserve was administered under the Scenery Preservation Act and the Tourist and Health Resorts Control Act, and later by the Department of Lands and Survey. The 1952 National Parks Act formally created Fiordland National Park, administered by its own park board, under the National Parks Authority and the Department of Lands and Survey. The Department of Conservation took over the management of National Parks in 1987.
In the twentieth century, Tamatea/Dusky Sound has provided a fishing ground as well as a haven for commercial fishing. In the 1950s, there was a boom in lobster fishing in Fiordland. Many commercial operators fished the area, with a peak catch of 6,000 tons. Blue cod was the main fishery until the end of the 1940s, with the lobster fisheries developing in the 1950s. The marine biodiversity areas were recognised in 2005 when the Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) Marine Management Act gazetted eight new marine reserves (building on the existing two) between Milford Sound in the north and Preservation Inlet in the south. These were marked by carved pou.
Another boom has been tourism, with operators providing charter trips to the sounds out of Doubtful Sound, and overseas cruise ships providing passengers with a view of the remote wonders of Fiordland.
World Heritage
In 1986 Westland/Tai Poutini, Aoraki/Mt Cook and Fiordland National Parks were included on the World Heritage List. In December 1990 the listing for Te Wahipounamu (South West New Zealand World Heritage Area) was widened to include Mt Aspiring National Park and all the intervening and adjacent significant natural areas in recognition of the area’s outstanding natural values.
In 2013 Tamatea/Dusky Sound remains an awe-inspiring wilderness with the signs of human contact providing a glimpse into the area’s special past. In the 2000s some 40,000 people travel through Fiordland each summer on the annual cruise ship run. A further 2500 people also travel around the sound each year with small Fiordland operators and on private boats.
