Interesting facts

Ōtamahua/Quail Island Ecological Restoration Trust and the Department of Conservation are working to remove pests and re-vegetate the island, and eventually re-introduce native wildlife they are currently looking at releasing kiwi onto it

Wildlife

  • Birds such as black-backed / karoro and red-billed gulls / tarāpunga, white-flippered penguins / kororā, terns, shags and oystercatchers are often seen from the observation point. Fantails / pīwakawaka and grey warblers / riroriro are present on the island.
  • Banks Peninsula tree weta have recently been transferred to the island – you may see custom-built weta homes attached to the trunks of manuka trees.

Geology

  • The island is 81 hectares in area, with a high point of 86 metres. It lies in the flooded crater of an extinct volcano – Lyttelton Harbour / Te Whakaraupo.
  • There were two rock quarries on the island. The columnar basaltic rock was used as ballast by early sailing ships returning home without cargo. Rhyolite stone was also quarried from above Walkers Beach by ‘hard labour gangs’ of prisoners bought over from the mainland. The stone was used to build walls and terraces along the foreshore which can be still seen today.

History

  • Ōtamahua means the place where children collect sea eggs. The island appears to have been uninhabited, but was visited often to collect shellfish, flax, bird’s eggs and other foods.
  • Fine stone from King Billy Island (a rocky outcrop just off Quail) was used to work greenstone/pounamu.
  • Captain Mein Smith named the island ‘Quail’ after seeing native quail here in 1842; they were extinct by 1875.
  • The island was farmed briefly in 1851 by the Ward brothers – until two of the brothers drowned in the harbour – and then it passed through several hands until it was used as a Quarantine Station in 1875 for new immigrants.
  • In 1907 a small leprosy colony was established on the island and housed several patients until 1925, when the remaining lepers were sent to Fiji.
  • The island was used to and train dogs and ponies for Scott and Shackleton’s expeditions.
  • In 1917 the island hospital was used during the influenza epidemic.
  • The island was declared a recreation reserve in 1975.

Cass Bay and Corsair Bay

  • The Māori name for Corsair Bay is Motu-kauati-iti, which means little fire-making tree grove, and the name for Cass Bay is Motu-kauati-rahi, which means great fire-making tree grove.
  • These two bays were home to many kaikōmako trees that were used for fire-making through wood friction.
  • The story of the myth behind the naming of the bays evolved from the legendary Mahuika, who threw fire from his finger tips into the kaikōmako tree.
  • A block of the kaikōmako was rubbed with a stick of hardwood until the resulting shavings burst into flame. The kaikōmako was used as the kauati, the piece which is rubbed; the pointed rubbing stick was called the kaurima.
  • There are no longer any of these ancient fire making trees growing on the shores of either bay.

 

The Fire-making process

 

Lyttelton, New Zealand

 

  • According to the 2001 census, the usually resident population of Lyttelton (including neighbouring bays such as Rapaki and Corsair Bay) was 3,042.
  • The Lyttelton Road Tunnel (opened in 1964) is the country’s longest road tunnel; and the railway tunnel of the Main South Line, officially opened on 1867–12-09, is the country’s oldest.
  • The harbour is an inlet on the northwestern side of Banks Peninsula, extending 18 km inland from the southern end of Pegasus Bay. It is surrounded by steep hills formed from the sides of an extinct volcanic crater, which rise to a height of 500 m.
  • A home for Māori for about 700 years, Lyttelton, or Te whaka raupo was discovered by European settlers on 16 February 1770 during the Endeavour’s first voyage to New Zealand. The earliest evidence of a human presence in the area is moa bones dating from roughly 1250.
    • Magazine Bay was known to Māori as Tāpoa, meaning “wind swirling around”.

  

Historic Fort Jervois, Ripapa Island

The Quarantine Station

  • Ripapa Island was used as a quarantine station for new immigrants from 1873 to 1885. In 1880 the Island was used temporarily as a prison for 150 of Te Whiti’s followers, transported from Taranaki. They were members of the Parihaka Māori settlement in Taranaki during its passive resistance campaign against the surveying and selling of its land by the government.
  • The quarantine buildings were dismantled when the Island was incorporated into the coastal defence scheme.

The Fort

  • Ripapa Island was one of four sites used for the Lyttleton Harbour defences, built in response to the perceived “Russian scare”. Two large disappearing guns, still virtually complete, One is a BL 8 inch gun (one of only 12 left in the world) the other is a smaller BL 6 inch gun that had been commissioned to be in active service but as the first test shot was fired, the recoil system failed and has cracked the barrel. The fort was occupied by the army until the end of World War I and re-occupied again during World War II. The Island has been managed by the Department of Conservation since 1990.

Pre-European history

  • in the early 19th Century, Chief Taununu of the Ngāi Tahu tribe built a pā on the island. In the 1820s Chief Taununu faced a fierce fight with another Ngāi Tahu group, in what was to be known as the Kai Huanga feud. Kai Huanga, meaning “eat relatives”, refers to the cannibalistic nature of the feud and that those they fought and ate were close relatives, even getting to a point where cousin would eat cousin.
  • The Ngāi Tahu tribe continued to occupy the island until around 1832. Prior to this, Chief Te Whakarukeruke who had been occupying Ripapa Island, left to help defend Kaiapoi from Te Rauparaha. After Kaiapoi fell, Te Rauparaha overran a number of Pa’s on and around Banks Peninsula, including the pa on Ripapa Island. The island was never again occupied by the Māori.