Ōtamahua / Quail Island
Māori History
The following text in single quotation marks is from the 2nd edition (revised) publication by Peter Jackson, Ōtamahua Quail Island – a link with the past, 2006, pp. 12-14:
‘Quail Island is called Ōtamahua, which means ‘the place where children (tamariki) collected seabirds’ eggs’ (hua). The eggs were considered a great delicacy, especially among the children who were said to have been fond of roasting them on their island expeditions.
Several earth oven (umu) sites have been discovered on the island.
Visits to Ōtamahua were made in canoes (waka) from Rāpaki and Kaitangata. Māori of the area would have walked across the mudflats from Moepuku to Ōtamahua during low tide.
Because of the shortage of freshwater and firewood, Ōtamahua was never permanently settled by Māori. A whare (house) for shelter existed on the island at the time of the first European settlers. The shores of Ōtamahua were popular for fishing and collection of shellfish (kaimoana). Huge flax fishing nets (kupenga), up to 400 metres long, were used for catching sharks. Kupenga from two to three metres deep were worked by canoes which would take one end into the middle of the harbour while the other end was secured to a convenient point.
The kupenga would be swept around the shoals of fish making their way up the harbour on the incoming tide. Huge quantities of shark and other fish were caught in this manner which was only possible when the whole strength of the hapū (sub-tribe) was available to assist.
Fish were also caught in rock fish traps built around the island’s shore. They swam into the trap and were left by the receding tide.
Quail Island was also known by the name of Te Kawa-kawa. This name is thought to refer to the pepper tree (macropiper excelsum) which had several important medicinal uses for Māori. Kawakawa, which reaches its southern distribution limit on Banks Peninsula has been replanted on the island.
Ōtamahua is of great cultural and spiritual importance to Ngāi Tahu. Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke (Rāpaki) hold mana whenua (customary rights) over the island.
… By the time of European settlement the Ngāi Tahu population of Whakaraupō and Banks Peninsula had been greatly reduced, initially by the intertribal kai huanga feud and later by the invading forces of Te Rauparaha.’
Archaeological records identify features from Māori sites such as midden, find spots for adzes, fish traps and umu.
Land Sale and Colonial settlement
The harbour area of Whakaraupō caught the attention of early European colonists. Captain William Mein Smith, Surveyor General to the New Zealand Company visited the main island in 1842, evidently the first European to do so. There he ‘flushed’ several koreke (the now extinct New Zealand quail) and named the place Quail Island.
In 1849 Walter Mantell, agent and surveyor for the Canterbury Association, made an agreement with Ngāi Tahu to purchase land in the Port Cooper (Lyttelton) district. Ōtamahua / Quail Island’s inclusion in the sale was controversial and disputed.
Farming
Early Canterbury Association settlers, the Irish brothers Edward, Henry and Hamilton Ward, won the land ballot for Quail Island in February 1851. A yawl was built immediately and building materials were taken to the island to construct a weatherboard house. This was completed in May 1851. Farming had already commenced by this time, to supply produce just across the water at the new settlement of Lyttelton. A cow, heifer and pigs were driven across the mudflats near the head of the harbour, and six goats were brought over by boat. Despite being an island, there were issues with animals escaping across the mudflats past Aua / King Billy Island and onto the mainland. In June 1851 Edward and Henry set out in the yawl to fetch firewood from the mainland, as there was little on the island, but they struck rough weather and were accidentally drowned. The younger brother, Hamilton, returned to live in Lyttelton until the arrival of another elder brother, Crosbie, from Northern Ireland. Crosbie Ward arrived in May 1852 and he and Hamilton are believed to have farmed on Quail Island for another three years before vacating the island.
In April 1858 Mark Stoddart of Diamond Harbour received a Crown grant for the purchase of 100 acres of Quail Island, King Billy Island and the adjacent peninsula. Stoddart never resided on the island but rather employed a man to look after the place. When Stoddart’s land was put up for sale on 2 December 1862, improvements consisted of a five-roomed house and from 24 to 500 sheep and lambs.
In 1863 the 100 acres was sold to early New Zealand naturalist, Thomas Potts. Potts acquired a further 85 acres from the Canterbury Waste Lands Board in September 1874 and 8 days later sold 100 acres to William Rolleston, Superintendent of Canterbury. Rolleston had the remaining 85 acres on Quail Island transferred to him on 13 April 1876, the land to be used for public purposes. By this time Ōtamahua / Quail Island was being used as a human quarantine station but small scale farming continued.
In 1887 Quail Island was leased by the Department of Health to A A Smith. In October 1888 Smith’s lease was taken over by Christopher Brown, who constructed a stock water dam using puddle-clay backed with stones. Brown’s lease was terminated in 1892, when the whole island became an animal quarantine station. Farming had a low profile until December 1931 when the animal quarantine station closed and the island was taken over by the Department of Lands and Survey who leased it for farming until 1950. In the 1940s the Navy League Sea Cadets leased a small portion of Quail Island for training and between 1949 and 1951 leased the whole of the island. Ex-Navy League caretaker, Thomas Russell, took over the lease and, raising his family on the island, he continued farming until 1958. The final lessee was David Halliwell, who resided on the island in the former animal quarantine caretaker’s cottage between 1958 and 1975, and grew potatoes and grazed sheep. He arranged for the installation of a telephone, which was important for arranging pick-up times for his potato crops and considered essential for his safety as he was mostly living and working on his own at Quail Island. Halliwell’s lease was surrendered in the mid 1970s and the Minister of Lands set apart the Crown Land as a reserve for recreation purposes in June 1976.
Ballast Quarrying
The early sailing ships arriving in Lyttelton often made their return voyage without cargo but to avoid dangerous instability, columnar basalt rock could be purchased for ballast. Two ballast quarries were established on the north-west side of Ōtamahua / Quail Island, providing ballast from the early 1850s until the mid-1870s. Men quarried the rock, loaded it into a lighter and took it to Lyttelton where it was sold. As well as the actual quarries, basalt was collected from the natural beach deposits for ballast or other purposes. By the 1860s more produce and goods were grown and manufactured in Canterbury for export and more ships were then able to carry cargo in their return journeys away from the port of Lyttelton, but the ballast quarrying at Quail Island continued until the mid-1870s.
In the 1980s the northern-most ballast quarry was re-opened, and a cableway constructed, to extract rock to rebuild the sea walls at the current ferry wharf and repairs around Whakamaru Beach.
Human Quarantine Station and Leper Colony
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century much of Ōtamahua / Quail Island was used as a human quarantine station.
From 1851, ships arriving in Lyttelton with passengers with infectious or contagious diseases were placed in quarantine and were required to fly a yellow flag during the day and show a lantern at night. After three months in cramped conditions at sea, the quarantining of a vessel was common. In 1863 a quarantine station was established at Camp Bay (on the south side of Lyttelton Harbour / Whakaraupō) and in 1873 a new one was erected on Ripapa Island in the harbour. Thoughts of running Ōtamahua / Quail Island as a quarantine station appear to have surfaced in early 1868 and in March 1874 Thomas Potts invited the Canterbury Provincial Government to establish a quarantine station at the southern part the island. The offer was accepted and work commenced on buildings before the island was actually purchased from Potts by the Provincial Government. A contemporary account in October 1874 described the new quarantine station as comprising two timber buildings capable of accommodating twelve families and two galvanised iron buildings for a large kitchen and day room.
The first use of Ōtamahua / Quail Island’s quarantine station facilities appears to have been in February 1875 when the Rakaia arrived after an 81 day journey from Plymouth, England, the ship full of illness. Eleven people had died on board, there were 100 cases of mumps, 55 cases of measles and eight cases of scarlet fever. The 66 single men were taken to the island for a ten day stay, while the remaining 159 adults and 60 single girls went to the Ripapa Island quarantine facilities.
Other quarantine station buildings, including a hospital, were also built. From the late 1870s the station tended to be used more for the isolation and convalescence of people with infectious diseases who were already in New Zealand, as opposed to those arriving. In 1879 it was used as a convalescent sanatorium for children from the Lyttelton Orphanage with diphtheria. Those suffering from smallpox used the facilities through until circa 1911. During the world-wide Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19, patients were sent to convalesce in the beach front buildings at Whakamaru Beach.
The most well-known quarantine patients associated with Ōtamahua / Quail Island were those known as the lepers. In the early twentieth century there was no cure for leprosy. Around the world colonies were established to isolate those with the contagious disease. Quail Island became New Zealand’s only leper colony.
In March 1906 Wilfred (Will) Vallane was diagnosed as having leprosy and was transferred to the quarantine hospital on Quail Island. However, the large hospital was uncomfortable for the sole occupant and so in 1907 the Department of Health had a small hut constructed for him. By 1911 there were four patients being treated at the Quail Island leper colony. As each new patient arrived, a hut was erected. Nine were built in total. Between 1907 and its closure in 1925, it is thought that a total of 14 patients were treated at the leper colony.
The leper colony included some of the earlier immigration quarantine buildings, and the make-up of the complex changed over time. A caretaker’s cottage was situated some 22 metres from the nearest patient’s shelter. A new nurse’s cottage was built in circa 1920-22 on the ‘hospital terrace’. Some time before the early 1920s an old Lyttelton Wharf Guardhouse was taken across to Quail Island by floating crane for use as a recreation hall for the leper patients. Sanitary blocks were constructed by H A Bolstead in circa 1920 to Public Works Department designs. Other leper colony buildings were also planned by the Health Department and grants were allocated but it is not clear how many were actually built. In 1921 the old hospital building was demolished to make way for semi-bungalow cottages for the men with leprosy, an improvement on the earlier single bedroom huts.
In October 1923 there were nine men classed as leprosy patients on Ōtamahua / Quail Island – George Philips, Matawai, Ivon Skelton, Jim Lord, Jimmy, Ipirini Apaapa, Ah Pat, Ah Yip and Will Vallane. Island based care was initially provided by the leper station caretaker, providing meals and basic nursing duties, and later a matron with a nurse assistant, providing medical, social and support services to the patients. An influential health professional at the colony, Matron Carston lived on the island from around April 1920 until April 1924. Lyttelton-based Dr Charles Hazlitt Upham was the medical doctor, making twice weekly visits to the leper patients until 1922. Thereafter the role was taken over by Christchurch-based Dr Thomas Fletcher Telford.
Two of the patients from the leper colony died and were buried on Quail Island. The first was 55 year old Sam Te Iringa, who died on 6 January 1922, after being at the island for about a year. He was buried on the island by Father Dan Doyle. The second was 25 year old Ivon Crispen Skelton who died on 20 October 1923 and was buried on 22 October 1923 by the Reverend A J Petrie. Eight years later, in late 1931, money was provided by the Public Works Department to erect a jarrah fence around the cemetery plot on Quail Island. However, archaeological excavations in 2015 found no skeletal remains. One possible explanation is that remains from the two burials have washed away in a storm in the 2000s. Alternatively, it is possible that the Public Works Department tradesmen who erected the fence made a mistake about the exact location of the graveyard and that the burials are elsewhere.
On 24 April 1925, the unoccupied large female immigration barracks on the terrace opposite the leper colony huts was unexpectedly burnt to the ground.
In August 1925 the remaining eight leprosy patients were transferred to Makogai Island in Fiji, ending the use of Quail Island as a human quarantine station. In November 1931, the nine leprosy patients’ huts were dismantled and burnt on the beach. The remaining eight large buildings and a variety of furniture used in connection with the leper colony was sold by public auction on 9 December 1931. One building went to Orton Bradley Park and remains in use there as an implement shed. The Department of Lands and Survey also purchased some of the surplus buildings (‘the barracks on the beach’, being the Quarantine Barracks, and the ‘two bedroom shack’ which was the old nurse’s cottage, later relocated up the hill in the 1980s).
By the 1980s, the Quarantine Barracks on Whakamaru Beach had fallen into a state of disrepair. They were restored in 1985, at which time a lean-to extension at the eastern end of the building, a cookhouse and ablutions block previously added by the Navy League were removed. Their significance as a rare survivor nationally of a nineteenth century immigration building was formally recognised as a Category 1 historic place in the 1990s.
In 2002, students from Catholic Cathedral College in Christchurch constructed a replica leper hut. An archaeological excavation took place at hut site three before the prefabricated hut was transported to the island, erected and officially opened in November 2002.
Animal Quarantine Station and Antarctic Expeditions
New Zealand’s pastoral industries are vulnerable to diseases carried by imported livestock. From the earliest days of colonial settlement, measures were introduced to prevent outbreaks of disease. The close proximity of Ōtamahua / Quail Island to the Port of Lyttelton and the Canterbury settlement meant that it was particularly suitable for quarantining imported stock. As early as 1855, part of the island was declared to be set apart for six months as a quarantine ground for diseased sheep. The Diseased Cattle Act 1873 meant that no cattle could be imported into New Zealand unless declared free of contagious or infectious diseases. In November 1881 only five acres was set aside as a quarantine ground for cattle on the island but it was gradually extended through the 1880s and by 1892 it covered the whole of Ōtamahua / Quail Island.
A stock wharf or cattle wharf was built on the south side of Ōtamahua / Quail Island in 1881 for landing domestic and farm animals. It included a crane and short railway to transport quarantined animals in their boxes from the wharf to solid ground, landing supplies and services to the island.
There were separate areas on the island for quarantining sheep, cattle, horses, pigs and dogs. The first red deer introduced to New Zealand were quarantined on the island in 1897 before being released in the Wilberforce Valley, west of Christchurch.
The most famous animal quarantining on the island occurred between 1901 and 1929 in relation to four Antarctic expeditions utilising the place for quarantining and training their dogs and ponies (and later mules) before commencing their journeys down to the ice. In November and December 1901, 23 Siberian dogs were kept on Ōtamahua / Quail Island with their trainer before heading to Antarctica as part of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1901-4 Discovery expedition. Because the dogs failed to perform in the extreme cold and did not survive, the following 1907-09 Nimrod expedition led by Lieutenant Ernest Shackleton utilised 15 Manchurian ponies as well as nine dogs, these being quarantined on Ōtamahua / Quail Island over the summer of 1907-8. Convinced by Shackleton’s efforts to reach the South Pole, Scott focused on similar methods of transport for his Terra Nova expedition of 1910-11. Nineteen Siberian or Manchurian ponies and 34 dogs were quarantined on the island during the spring of 1910. With specialist trainers, these dogs and ponies practiced hauling makeshift sledges on the sandy beaches of the southern bays of Ōtamahua / Quail Island before heading to the ice. Scott had arranged for additional ponies and dogs to arrive in New Zealand while he and his party wintered in the Antarctic, with seven Himalayan mules and 14 Siberian dogs arriving at Ōtamahua / Quail Island in the summer of 1911. Scott’s plan was they would be a back-up should a second attempt at the pole be required, but when these reinforcements arrived in 1912 they were instead used in the search party for Scott. The last use of Ōtamahua /Quail Island as an animal quarantine station was for 15 husky dogs destined as reinforcements for Commander Richard Byrd’s Antarctic expedition of 1928-29. Fifteen huskies were quarantined on the island between March and July 1929, as planned backup for 90 huskies that had been sent to the ice from Quarantine Island in Port Chalmers in 1928.
Animal quarantining ceased in 1931, and the quarantine ground was officially abolished on 22 July 1952.
Prisoners, Hard Labour and Corrective Camps
In 1866 Ōtamahua / Quail Island was identified as being suitable for a general penal establishment. When the Crown purchased Quail Island from Thomas Potts in 1874, it was again mooted as suitable for a central prison, as well as human quarantine station. In 1907 the matter came up again and options for a gaol were explored, allowing for the ongoing operation of the human quarantine station. However, in the end, concerns about the leper colony and its patients put a halt to the proposal.
Nevertheless, a number of structures and landscape features on Ōtamahua / Quail Island are the product of prison labour. Prisoners from the harbour labour gang from Lyttelton Gaol had a long association with the island from the 1870s until at least 1904. By the late 1890s a considerable amount of work was done for the ‘Stock Department’ by prisoners who came over by launch from Lyttelton to work on the island during the day. A stone wall behind the western end of the quarantine station was constructed by prisoners using stone from the rhyolite quarry on the hilltop to the west. In 1903 three large concrete water tanks were constructed by them.
Corrective training camps were held by industrial schools on Ōtamahua / Quail Island. Between 1904 and circa 1916, ‘good conduct boys’ from the Burnham Industrial School went to the island for annual summer training camps. They undertook domestic work, military drill and rifle shooting, and also enjoyed swimming, boating and fishing. Girls from Te Oranga Home had two week camps at the island each year for a few years from December 1902, which was a relief from their confined life at the reformatory school.
Military
In the 1880s, a number of military type groups utilised Ōtamahua / Quail Island for overnight camps and training. These included the Lyttelton Artillery, Lyttelton Navel Brigade and the Christ’s College Rifle Corps.
The training group most widely known for its association with the island is the Navy League Sea Cadets, who were there in the 1940s and early 1950s. A lease to the cadets was established on 24 September 1943, providing a temporary year to year tenancy of 1 acre, 2 roods. This tenancy included the use of and responsibility for the old Quarantine Barracks on Whakamaru Beach, and the stables. A naval school was established and the small portion of Quail Island was to be used for a campsite and base for training local sea cadets. The League’s camps were so successful that it was given official recognition as the national headquarters for sea cadets. The cadet camps trained in boat work, seamanship, signalling and musketry, skills that would fit the cadets especially for entry into the Royal New Zealand Navy. By December 1946 the League was using the lease as a national school for cadets and a five year licence was granted to occupy the old nurse’s cottage. The Second World War was fresh in the minds of all, and it was felt that the Navy Sea Cadets would help maintain interest in the activities and traditions of the Navy. Although the annual camps for the cadets on the island were popular, the Navy League struggled to meet the cost of maintaining the lease and so it was relinquished in March 1951.
Scout and Sea Scout groups have also held camps on the island over the years.
Recreation
From the early days of colonial settlement, recreational excursions were made by mainlanders to visit Ōtamahua / Quail Island. A Lyttelton Times notice in January 1854, for example, advertised ‘Excursion to Quail Island: Two Vessels, with accommodation for 100 passengers, will leave Lyttelton for the above-mentioned place on Monday the 6th February, returning the same evening…’.
When the island operated as a quarantine station for animals and people, especially when it was a leper colony, recreational visits were less common.
From the late 1950s, for about six months of each year lessee David Halliwell acted as picnic ground proprietor by catering for picnic and camping groups on the south side of the island. He also rented out the ‘bach’ which was the old leper colony nurse’s cottage that had been shifted from the hospital terrace to Whakamaru Beach in the late 1950s.
In 1976 Quail Island Crown Land was set apart for recreation purposes (NZ Gazette 1976, p. 1367). In 1982 the whole of Ōtamahua / Quail Island was classified as a reserve for recreation purposes (NZ Gazette 1982, p. 2434) and at this time Diamond Harbour Launch Services began a regular ferry service to Quail Island. In the 1980s a new wharf was built for the ferry, at or near the site of an earlier wharf, on the east side of the island.
Working alongside the Department of Conservation, and Ngāti Wheke as a trustee, the Ōtamahua / Quail Island Restoration Trust formed as a group in 1998 and volunteer members frequently gather on the island to undertake ecological restoration planting.
Ships’ Graveyard
In the early 1900s, the easiest way to discard a ship was to strip it of all its valuable pieces and then beach it, letting the ocean salt, waves and wind break down its remains. Between 1902 and 1951, the seabed just off the western end of Ōtamahua / Quail Island was used as a dumping ground for the hulks of unserviceable ships. The remains of up to 13 vessels, most of these first seeing service in the latter half of the nineteenth century, have been towed to the ships’ graveyard. The Flying Squirrel was scuttled in 1902. The Waiwera, Dorset, Don, Red Jacket and Lyttelton were all dumped in circa 1907. These were followed by Belle Isle in circa 1920, Mullogh in circa 1923, La Plata in 1929, Frank Guy in 1937 and the Darra in 1953. It is not known when the Queen was dumped.
Shell Mining
Shells on Quail Island were considered to be particularly suitable for the purpose of crushing for poultry grit. R W Walker entered into shell grit harvesting and formed OVO Grit Ltd which was to become a household name within Canterbury. Despite a bylaw restricting cockle and other shelf harvesting from Lyttelton Harbour / Whakaraupō beaches in a move to protect to the foreshore, Walker harvested shells throughout the 1920s. He eventually won the right to collect shell and in 1929 obtained a sole permit to take shell from Ōtamahua / Quail Island’s south west beach (Walker’s Beach). His son, Bernard, ran the launch and was the first to cart shell from the island. Shell mined was taken from Ōtamahua / Quail Island by boat, trucked to Walker’s factory in Christchurch, crushed into grit and bagged for sale for poultry use. Bernard continued to extract shell until 1970 when he cancelled his shell gathering licence as a result of the poultry industry changing to use agricultural lime rather than shell grit.
Aua / King Billy Island
The following text in single quotation marks is from Jackson, pp. 13-14:
‘The adjacent King Billy Island (Aua) was an important area to Ngāi Tahu as a source of sandstone (hōanga) that was prized as an excellent grinding agent for greenstone (pounamu) and other stone implements.
Grinding pounamu was a slow and laborious task. The stone was first flaked into a rough outline of the implement before having the surface hammered level in preparation for grinding. It was then ground on a slab of abrasive sandstone on to which water was applied. This produced the continuous line of the cutting edge and was used for polishing the face, back and sides of the adze. The upper butt was left in a rougher condition to allow a better grasp during use.
There were two types of sandstone, the coarse-grained matanui and the fine-grained matarehu. The coarse-grained Aua sandstone was ideal for grinding stone implements.’
Aua / King Billy Island was not officially named by the New Zealand Geographic Board until 1975, as prior to that it was considered too minor a feature to be recognised. Ngāti Wheke elders consider aua to mean ‘no name’. Other known names for the island include Little Quail Island, Sandstone Island and Rat Island. The name ‘King Billy’ may have originated from a comic book character called King Billy who lived on an island similar to Aua / King Billy Island, or perhaps it is named after England’s King William IV, or it may refer to Billy Lanny, a well-known Australian aborigine whaler.
In 1862 an advertisement in the Lyttelton Times for the sale by public auction of Quail Island refers also to ‘… smaller Quail Island well known as the best freestone quarry in the Province...’. Māori had mined sandstone on Aua for tool shaping. European settlers used it extensively in construction. The Lyttelton Gaol, for example, was cornered and faced with sandstone from the island. Most likely T H Potts mined sandstone from Aua / King Billy Island to build his home, Ohinetahi, at Governors Bay at the head of the harbour in 1864.
The Anderson family of Charteris Bay had owned the island from the turn of the twentieth century until 1975 when it was purchased by the Crown.
Aua / King Billy Island was classified as a Recreation Reserve in 1979 but its status was formally changed to Scenic Reserve in 1980. The justification for the classification change was ‘that a scenic classification, while permitting existing recreational value, would more protect the natural values’.
