SUB-ANTARCTIC ISLANDS

The main island groups within the territory of New Zealand, and usually described as “sub-Antarctic”, are the Auckland and Campbell Islands, almost due south of Stewart Island, and the Antipodes and Bounty Islands farther out to the south-east of it. They all stand above the submarine platform surrounding New Zealand. The Macquarie Islands belonging to Australia are separated from it by deep water.

The Auckland Islands

This group, lying between 50° 26' and 50 56' S, and between 165° 52' and 166 22' E, with a total land area of 220 sq. miles, is approximately 200 miles SSW of Stewart Island. In the group are one large and five smaller islands, with several detached islets and rocky pinnacles. The main island, in area 179 sq. miles, is some 24 miles long and from 3 to 16 miles wide, with Adams Island (35½ sq. miles) in the south, Enderby Island (1,770 acres) in the north, and Disappointment Island off the west coast. All the islands are of volcanic origin with a maximum height of just over 2,000 ft. The east coast of the main island is deeply embayed with long, narrow inlets, but on the west coast are long, unbroken lines of high, steep cliffs—hence the very good sheltered anchorages are in the east, notably in Carnley Harbour which divides Adams Island from the mainland. The climate is cool (temperature range 35°–65 F), humid, cloudy, and very windy. Nevertheless, most of the area is clothed with shrubby forest at lower levels; above about 300 ft are open patches of tussock and sub-Antarctic meadowland. Soils are peaty, waterlogged, and sour.

Abraham Bristow, a whaling captain, discovered the group in 1806, and whaling and sealing attracted temporary and intermittent populations up till 1852 when settlement was abandoned. Little notice seems to have been taken of the islands until ships sailing the great circle route from Australia to Cape Horn were wrecked there. Special interest was taken in the General Grant, carrying passengers and gold in 1866. Following this wreck, depots for castaways were set up to be maintained until 1929. Attempts to find and salvage the gold of the General Grant seem to have done more than anything else to keep public interest in the island alive.

In the 1890s cattle and sheep were grazed with some success, but the isolation of the islands caused this venture to be abandoned. A few wild cattle, pigs, and goats still survive. Oceanic birds (e.g., petrels, penguins, and shags) are plentiful; there are still a few fur seals; sea lions breed there, and such other sea mammals as the sea elephant and the sea leopard are regular visitors.

Campbell Island

This island, some 44 sq. miles in area, lies in latitude 52° 30' S and longitude 169° 8' E, i.e., some 150 miles ESE of the Auckland group. High and rugged in the south (up to 1,867 ft), it slopes off more gently to the north where smoothed ridges and open valleys suggest considerable recent glaciation. The east coast is broken by the two long, narrow, sheltered inlets of Perseverance and North-east Harbours; the former, indeed, almost severs the island in two. Off the cliffed coasts of the west and south are several little rocky islets. The geological structure of the island is rather complex. There are some scattered sedimentary beds, but most of the surface rocks are nearly horizontal sheets of lava and scoria, with older coarse-grained gabbros in the rugged south-west.

The climate of Campbell Island is similar to that of the Auckland group; though a little colder, it has less cloud and more sunshine and soils are not so wet and sour. Over most of the area is a cover of tussock with some scattered patches of scrubby Dracophyllum. Herbaceous plants, formerly varied and abundant, have for the most part been eaten out by sheep.

The island was discovered in 1810 by F. Hasselburgh, captain of the sealing ship Perseverance, owned by the Sydney firm of Campbell and Co. The seal population was soon reduced to the point where interest in the island was lost. It was visited by the Ross expedition in 1840 and, sporadically up to the 1890s, by whalers. In 1896 sheep were introduced and the island was more or less continuously occupied up till 1931.

Present interest in Campbell Island centres on the meteorological station set up there in 1941, and maintained continuously since.

The Legend of the Exiled Princess

This legend of the exiled princess, of which there are several versions, all highly romantic, is associated with heather plants that grow on the island, in all probability introduced by an early whaler or sealer. According to the legend a stone fireplace, a shell-paved pathway to the nearby water's edge, a ragged stand of flax bushes - at one time evidently a neatly planted windbreak - and some straggling heather plants identify the remains of the lonely home of an exiled lady of noble birth who is described usually as “the French princess” or “the Jacobite princess”. About 10 years after the Napoleonic Wars had ended this “princess” is said to have been involved in a plot which threatened to overthrow the then French monarchy. One version says that she was a daughter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, but this account is perhaps the least credible, because that daughter died in France. Another version states that the exiled princess was betrothed to a Scottish nobleman who laid claim to the thrones of England, Scotland, and France. For some reason it was desirable to send her out of harm's way. She was therefore sent overseas in the care of a sea captain who, eventually, put her ashore at Campbell Island. A small sod hut was built for her at Camp Cove and there, it is said, she was found dead of starvation a year later. Near the hut was found a patch of Scottish heather, which, according to the legend, was planted by the princess to remind her of her lover.

The Antipodes Islands

These consist of a main island some 5 miles long by 3 miles wide, with offshore islets and rock stacks making an area estimated to be 24 sq. miles in all. They lie in latitude 49° 41' S and longitude 178° 43' E. The main island is a rough plateau bounded by remarkably even lines of steep cliffs, especially in the north-west. The highest point (Mount Galloway) is 1,320 ft. The surface is very rough with a widespread blanket of waterlogged peat, with swamps and tarns in the hollows. Knowledge of geological structure is scanty but all the islands of the group seem to be of volcanic origin. Similarly, detailed information about the climate is meagre, but the dense cover of coarse tussock and hardy herbaceous plants growing on cold, wet peat indicates that conditions are bleak and inhospitable.

The islands, once famous for their fur seals, were discovered in 1800 by Captain Waterhouse of HMS Reliance. The first sealer was Pendleton, an American, whose gang was marooned there for nearly two years. They brought 60,000 skins back to Sydney and started the rush that soon exterminated the stock.

A depot for castaways was maintained on the Antipodes, but only two wrecks have occurred there. The crew of the first, the Spirit of the Dawn, in 1893, did not find the depot, but it was useful to the castaways from the President Felix Faure in 1908.

The Bounty Islands

These, the barest, bleakest, and most desolate of New Zealand's outlying islands, lie in latitude 47° 43' S and longitude 179° 5' E, i.e., some 490 miles east of Stewart Island. Built wholly of granite, they may well be described as a distant outlier of Stewart Island itself. Their total area is just over half a square mile.

Captain William Bligh of the Bounty discovered and named them in 1788. It was only in the early 1800s that they had any appeal at all to visitors. Sealers marooned their gangs there on the most inhospitable of bare rock terrain, without any natural vegetation and without permanent fresh water supply. The vast seal population was soon almost completely destroyed, and the survivors today seem to be building up in numbers only very slowly. There is, however, a prodigious population of sea birds, especially penguins and mollyhawks.

The islands have no other practical significance. As a sanctuary they should be preserved; in any case they are very difficult to visit and no one is likely to stay there long.

by George Jobberns, C.B.E., M.A., D.SC., Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Canterbury.

• N.Z. Geographer, Vol. 4, No. 2, (1948), “The Outlying Islands of New Zealand”, Falla, R. A.