Fergus, Mary, and the penguins: a Catlins experience

Papatowai, New Zealand, May 2007

By Lauren Koshere

What do homemade grapefruit marmalade, the largest wave in New Zealand, and the world’s rarest penguin have in common? They all can be experienced on one of AustraLearn’s Conservation Volunteer Weekends in the lower-South Island reserve known as the Catlins.

Hosted and guided by the warm Fergus and Mary Sutherland, five other AustraLearn students and I recently had the opportunity to spend two days in Papatowai getting up-close and personal with the bush and animals of the Catlins’s unique coastal rainforest. We woke on Saturday morning to Mary’s famous home cooking, savouring hot porridge (oatmeal), homemade grapefruit marmalade, local honey, and freshly stewed apples—straight from wild trees in the Catlins. For those who had developed real Kiwi taste buds in their three months in New Zealand, morning satisfaction could was also available in musli, Marmite spread, and Weet Bix cereal.

Driving to our project site that morning, we saw the reef responsible for “Papa’s XL”—the largest wave on record in New Zealand—before passing through some of Southland’s remotest rainforest. We drove through acres of lush New Zealand paddocks, five farm gates, and more than one congregation of stubborn cows before arriving mid-morning to the remote reserve, known as Te Rere (Maori for “the falls”).

The day’s activities focused on preserving a section of Yellow-Eyed Penguin habitat maintained by New Zealand conservation group the Forest and Bird Society. Yellow-Eyed are unique penguins in that they nest in the bush and prefer privacy from other birds—characteristics making them particularly vulnerable to loss of coastal bush habitat and invasive mammal predators. Because of the decades of dedication offered by Fergus and other volunteers, Te Rere is now home to a healthy but threatened population of about sixty birds.

Under Fergus’s guidance, we spent the morning clipping, tramping, and yanking thick bush away from sensitive electric fences (safely turned off for the day) that protect the penguins’ habitat from browsing cattle. All the while teaching us about the land’s history and native plants, Fergus took the time to specifically comment on the thorny, rosebush-like branch of one species. We recognised it immediately because it had almost snagged several people’s fleece jackets. “They call this one bush lawyer,” he explained with a dose of light-hearted, teasing Kiwi humour “….because it’ll take the shirt off your back.”

After a lunch of tasty sandwiches and slices (dessert bars) made by Mary, we tramped with Fergus through native flax bushes into the heart of penguin habitat. There, we checked traps set for rats and stoats, which are small, invasive rodents that threaten penguin populations by eating eggs and attacking chicks. We also maintained native bush restoration areas by treating recently-planted shrubs and trees with deer repellent to prevent them from being munched to the ground.

By 4:30 in the afternoon, the sun fell low in the western sky, and Fergus guided us to an outcropping from which we would watch the penguins return from a day of fishing at sea.

From the perch, we had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of the world’s rarest penguins in their natural habitat (wow!). Using the surge of the surf to their advantage, the small birds swam close to the shore’s gentle rock incline before catching a wave for their final thrust onto land. Light lingered long enough for us to observe about fifteen birds make landfall, waddle around on the rocks, and socialize with squeaky utterances. Dusk descended quickly, however, and eventually forced us to tramp back to our van.

While the weekend was full of superlatives—the largest wave, the rarest penguin, the farthest south many had yet travelled—the experience was also about quality experiences. Fergus and Mary gave us both enjoyment and enrichment as they shared their dedication to a cause and their knowledge of the local environment with us. AustraLearn students may have gone to the Catlins willing to give their time, but they emerged from the experience having only gained.