The weather was good that Saturday in May. Boats smaller than the Kotuku trawler were out fishing. The ferry service to Stewart Island carried on as usual. But in the afternoon an ebb tide was running, and when it goes against the wind, that can be bad, very bad – in a strong wind, waves in Foveaux Strait are almost vertical. The wind liable to cause the most damage is a north-wester. It came around that afternoon, blowing maybe 25 or 30 knots, when the Kotuku picked up the Topi family from Kaihuka Island.
Peter Topi had gone out that morning by helicopter to help his daughter and grandkids off the island. The day before, he was up in Alexandra to attend the opening of a whare at the school. He was a hugely respected man, widely liked. He kept a good home on the island, and another one at Ruapuke Island, once the main Maori settlement in all of Southland, with its seven pas formed by the great chief Tuhawaiki, known as the King of the Bluff.
You could say that Ruapuke used to function as a centre of government; you could even say that now. Ruapuke Maori control all rights and access to the Muttonbird Islands. They were handed back by the Crown in 1997. Administrative committees were set up, by-laws drafted. This season was the first year that the islands operated under the new regime.
Morrie Trow, 73, sits on the committee. He wouldn’t discuss the Kotuku tragedy – his brother had lost a grandchild, Sailor Trow-Topi. Neither would he discuss the tally of birds killed on the islands. That particular reticence was common in Bluff. Muttonbirding is a closed shop, not quite a secret society but a matter clearly of nobody else’s business. ‘To have the right to go to the Muttonbird Islands,’ said Trow, ‘you must be a descendant of the original owners of Ruapuke. That’s where you get your rights from. You don’t get your rights because you’re a Maori. You might be a Maori and have lived in Bluff all your life. And your father, and your grandfather. But if your whakapapa doesn’t go back to the original owner, you don’t have the right to go. But I have. It’s a blood thing. It’s probably the last blood thing in this country.’
The tradition of muttonbirding is unique to Bluff. A unique source – the sooty shearwaters (estimated population, 20 million) make their annual migration from feeding sites in Japan, Alaska or California (at 40,000 miles, it’s the longest migration ever recorded by electronic tracking) to breed only on the islands in the Foveaux. A unique set of customs – only the chicks are taken, either by reaching down into burrows and grabbing them out by hand or by hook, or getting them above ground, at night, when they come out and flap their wings about for the first time. The role of Maori, too, is unique, because the Ruapuke Maori include some of the whitest Maori you’ll ever see.
‘Oh yes,’ said Trow, ‘the Maoris down here have lighter skins than any other Maori in the country. They’re no different to any other European in the country.’ Trow looked rather like the actor Lloyd Bridges. His grandfather was a Shetland Islander. ‘My grandmother was a half-caste Maori,’ he said. ‘We believe this is one of the first places in New Zealand that whalers and sealers really got into bed with the Maori. That’s what happened – they got friendly with the wahines, and then you had half-castes running around all over the place.’ So, many Ruapuke Maori were Shetland Island Maori, Portuguese Maori, Norwegian Maori, Scottish Maori, Irish Maori. Their European descendants came to Bluff long before the Treaty of Waitangi – later signed on Ruapuke Island – and set up the town, naming its streets after rivers in Ireland. Trow could date his European ancestors in Bluff back to 1902.
As well as the tradition – Trow even claimed that muttonbirding was ‘spiritual’ – there is the money. Bluff muttonbirders freeze their catch and have enough to last until Christmas, or later. Many are given away as gifts, and to raffles. But you could ask around town and be told in whispers that most muttonbirds are sold in the North Island. About 250 muttonbirders are on the islands at any one time during the season, which officially opens on 1 May and lasts for less than a month, until the birds take off again on the long migration back to Antarctica.
It is possible for one person to bag a hundred, even two hundred or more, in a day. One bird fetches about $7. A bucket of 20 costs $170. Boats came back to Bluff with about 400 buckets from an island. As for the costs, there wouldn’t be much change from $10,000 to charter boats and helicopters, and lay down supplies for the time spent on the island. But a good haul of birds might fetch as much as $60,000.
Private sales? You can get a beautiful feed of blue cod at the Bluff RSA for $14, but there wasn’t a menu anywhere in town selling muttonbirds. You could ask, again in whispers, behind your hand. It might take only as long as the first person you approach. The kindness and generosity of Bluff people is legendary. One man said: I’ll do you one. He said: Put your money away. He said: Happy to.
They said in Bluff: ‘People are as welcome here as flowers in May.’ Unless they came for the wrong reasons. The story of small New Zealand towns is told in pride; resentment comes when visitors are attracted by tragedy. It was one thing for the walls of the pubs to be covered in heroic photographs of boats riding enormous waves, and for murals to
