Stewart Island - Prologue

Last Saturday morning I had the awesome opportunity to go to Stewart Island overnight. I went with Donald (my "brother" in the Wilson home) and his friend Daniel.

So first let me explain that Stewart Island is the little island just below the "main body" of New Zealand. It is part of New Zealand, so you don't need ID to travel there or anything.

85% of it is National Park and only 4% of the island is humanly populated. The permanent population is 380 and there is only 27 kilometres of public road. All of the permanent human population lives in Oban, which you will see on the upper right hand side of the island above the water inlet. They have only had electricity since 1988 and private phone lines since a year later (they were using "party phones" before then, where a whole bunch of people would use one phone line but had different rings for each house hold). Power is about 4 times more expensive to pay for. The lady who told us this said that if she were to use the same amount of power as someone on the mainland whose bill is $150 for a month, her bill would be $600 for the exact same. So they learn to conserve power and water (as the only drinkable water supply is rainwater - since they are only surrounded by salt water).

It is a quaint little place where everyone knows everyone else. The local police officer (yes, that is singular) is not really meant to be giving out traffic tickets (parking, speeding, etc) because he has to live amongst the people there and would not have a very good time having 380 people against him. So instead he's more involved in search and rescue, environmental conservation and keeping the community notice board up to date. In order to keep the peace, an officer from the mainland (South Island - where I live) comes over once in a while to put out traffic violations but somehow the date and time ends up on the notice board so people know when to obey the law.

A fun story about Stewart Island and alcohol - back in the days of prohibition:
I forget the exact years but alcohol was illegal. However even though it was illegal, it was still available. There was a small operation in the back of the local barber shop where they say "You'd go in to get a hair cut and come out half-cut". Of course like most illegal operations, it was discovered by the mainland police, and a Justice of the Peace came over to Stewart Island to try the perpetrators. The reason for having brought someone over from the mainland is not because there wasn't a Justice of the Peace on the island, but because it WAS the Justice of the Peace AND the local police officer who were running the illegal distillery!

It turns out that in order to survive in such a small community, you learn to become multi-talented!!!

One of the major benefits of living in Stewart Island is the quality of life that the kids have. Electricity is too expensive to have them turn into internet junkies or TV-watching couch potatoes. There are no fast food restaurants. The streets and bush are crime free (aside from your usual petty crime), and so the kids have free-reign to do what they like. Build forts. Go whitebaiting (catching little fish) in the creek. Explore. Get exercise. It's a great place to raise a family, as long as you have the funds and the will to live a more simple life.

The scenery is spectacular. The wildlife is rare and protected (kiwis, etc). It almost makes ME want to move there. However, like I half-mentioned, it is quite expensive. One piece of land that was appraised at about 130,000 a few years ago is now worth 750,000 without having made any changes to it. Crazy hey?!

The main economy is tourism. The water is home to many amazing species (I will tell you about my under-water journey in the next entry). Petrol is $2.20 per LITRE (but I guess when you only have 27 km of public road, you don't go through it that quickly).

Anyways...that's about all I know of Stewart Island to give you an idea. My next entries will be divided into two; my first day and then my second day. I will do this hopefully before the end of the evening. If not, then by Monday at the latest.

Enjoy!