Chathams: ‘Remote, wild and utterly fascinating’

• Published date: 22 February 2022
• Publication title: Ensign, The

Here’s a question that won’t turn up in the Kiwiana section at the Strangled Ferret pub quiz next week. What’s the one thing that all regions of Aotearoa are legally required to give their residents

Clue: it’s not Three Waters or decent rubbish collection. It’s ‘‘an annual founding day during which workers can get the day off’’.

This act of generosity stretches to our farthest-flung council, even though it wasn’t included in the Treaty, didn’t become part of the motu umbrella for several years, and at one stage we were going to flick it to the Germans. Or the French.

This would be the Chatham Islands, 800km east of Wellington, aka Rekohu (‘‘Misty Sun’’) in Moriori, Wharekauri in Maori, and ‘‘the islands at the end of the weather forecast’’ in NewZild.

Remote, wild and utterly fascinating for the tri-culture, plants and wildlife, lifestyle and history, the 660 locals celebrate their anniversary day — in typically lo-fi style — on the Monday nearest to November 30.

That honours the day in 1791 when Lieutenant William Broughton ‘‘discovered’’ the archipelago, named it after his Royal Navy ship and claimed it for the British Empire. He was about 300 years late.

Let’s not rabbit on about history. Let’s find a backpack of reasons why the Chathams should be on your 2022 must-do list. Tip: book flights, beds, tours well before you go.

Chatham Islands Museum

First stop so you can understand why this place is so different from the mainland. The rest of the world, actually. There’s the natural history — rocks, fossils (including dinosaurs), rare birds and other wildlife. Then the culture, from its first people, the Moriori, to early European sealers, whalers, traders and missionaries, later Maori arrivals and still later European farmers. There are plans for a new museum more than six times the size of the present one, because there’s a lot of nature and history here.

The Moriori Story

This feature isn’t the place to recount the Moriori story and our education hierarchy’s shameful part in distorting it, but Kopinga marae is certainly the place to learn about the indigenous people and the vow of peace they were not prepared to break when invaded in 1835. Designed to recall the island’s basalt columns and flying albatross totem, this is the base for the revival of the language, cultural and community events. At Manukau, the statue of Tommy Solomon (Tame Horomona Rehe), the last known full-blooded Moriori who died aged 49 in 1933, stands as a memorial to all his...