Mākaro / Ward Island

Transcription

[Traditional Māori music (14 secs)] [Narrator] Landing at Wellington Airport can be a scary experience. The strong winds which often funnel through Cook Strait can make landing aircraft on the narrow strip of land, with hills on both sides and the sea at either end, very difficult. Only 800 years ago, the land the airport sits on lay underwater. There were three islands in the harbour. Two small ones lay in the centre and a very large island, known as Motukairangi, was located just a couple of kilometres from the harbour's southern shore. But around 1460, a massive earthquake substantially raised land in this area. After the shake, Motukairangi found itself joined to the mainland by a narrow strip of raised land which lay only a few metres above sea level and is today the Miramar Peninsula. Large earthquakes in 1848 and 1855 raised the land around Wellington Harbour by a further two metres. In the 1920s, early aviators made a landing strip among the sand dunes separating Motukairangi and the mainland. Forty years later this was substantially improved to provide a much larger airstrip capable of landing modern aircraft -- the forerunner of today's Wellington Airport. The Māori story of the creation of Wellington Harbour involves superhuman creatures known as taniwha. According to the story, long ago Wellington Harbour was a lake. Two taniwha, Ngake and Whātaitai, in the lake. Both felt confined and longed for open sea, only just beyond the lake's eastern edge. The restless Ngake curled his long tail like a spring against the western edge of the lake and hurled himself through the water towards the eastern shore. He succeeded in carving a passage through it to the nearby open sea, creating the entrance to the harbour from Cook Strait. Soon afterwards, Whātaitai tried to create a second entrance to the sea, close to Ngake's. But he become trapped by the receding tide that Ngake had let in and eventually washed up on the shore exhausted. His dead body is still there, known today as the Hataitai Ridge. Tangi-te-keo, known today as Mount Victoria, was named after the spirit of Whātaitai. After leaving the taniwha's body, the spirit flew up to the top of this hill in the shape of a bird and proceeded to weep. In Maori, tangi means to weep and mourn. Later, according to Māori traditions, an early Polynesian navigator called Kupe visited the harbour. Kupe's family made the harbour their base while Kupe explored the area. Kupe named the two small islands in the middle of the harbour, Matiu and Mākaro, after his children. Today both are conservation reserves. Mākaro, also known as Ward Island, is the smaller of the two islands. It's steep sides and lack of water discouraged human occupation. But Matiu Island, also known as Somes Island, has been inhabited for many years. Perfectly positioned in the centre of the harbour, Matiu Island offered security to a succession of Māori tribes who built fortified villages there. Somes Island became a quarantine station during the nineteenth century, then an internment camp for suspected enemies during the First and Second World Wars. It was not until 1995 that Matiu Island became a conservation reserve. Since then, a lot of its vegetation has grown back and it is home to a range of endangered species. One of these species is the tuatara. This native reptile is described as a 'living fossil' as it is the sole remaining species of a type that was alive back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.