On island time
Tourism is growing on D’Urville Island, but like everything in the remote outpost, island life moves at its own pace.
Just 500 metres of water separate D’Urville Island from the mainland, but it feels much further away than that. The outermost island in the Marlborough Sounds is home to about 40 permanent residents, has just over 60 kilometres of dirt roads and three intersections.
As the clouds roll in over the island’s peaks and ridges – as if in a time-lapse film – it’s easy to see why visitors and long-time residents alike find it so alluring.
It has an other-worldly charm. Visiting D’Urville is little bit like stepping back in time, a lot like being in the wilderness. The green hues of the bush seem more intense and the blue of the surrounding ocean more vivid.
Craig Aston has always called D’Urville home. Born on the island, he left as a teenager for high school in Blenheim and later worked as a commercial fisherman, but his plan was always to return and raise a family of his own.
Now, he and wife Christine run D’Urville Crossings, a barge service between French Pass on the mainland and Kapowai Bay on the island. The couple live in the Ngamuka Bay house in which Craig was born.
Craig, often accompanied by border collie Squidward, ferries people to the island and back on a daily basis.
The Astons, married now for 31 years, started the service six years ago, and since then, demand has been such that Craig sold his fishing boat to focus full-time on the barge service.
‘‘This just got so busy that I wasn’t doing fishing justice, really. I couldn’t get enough time to actually go and catch fish so we had to do one or the other and this is so much easier on my back.’’
The barge service is the Aston retirement plan and business has increased steadily, despite a lack of advertising.
The barge can transport up to 8 tonnes. It fits two cars or up to 25 people.
Christine, who met Craig in Wellington, says the isolation attracted the couple to the island.
‘‘You have to like your own company. If you were used to shopping, it would be a disappointment.’’
The Astons have no direct neighbours in Ngamuka Bay but there are more vessels around the island compared to when they first moved there, she says.
‘‘Now there are just colossal amounts of boats coming either from Nelson or across from Mana or from Okiwi Bay or even just out of French Pass, so there are boats all year round, every day of the week, virtually.’’
The island has long been a fishing and hunting mecca. Red deer and wild pigs roam the hills while kingfish, snapper, groper and blue cod are found in its waters.
Another way to get to d’Urville without the help of Craig and Squidward would be aboard a water taxi with Lindsay Elkington.
Like Craig, Lindsay grew up on the island. He lives in Cherry Tree Bay in Catherine Cove, not far from his family homestead.
The idyllic setting means he had an ‘‘absolutely brilliant childhood’’.
‘‘Some of us didn’t like going to school because we had to leave the island.’’
A commercial fisherman, Lindsay fished for orange roughy before moving overseas. Based in Cape Town, he delivered vessels to Canada, China and Japan, and fished the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.
Returning to the island four years ago, he opened D’Urville Island Water Taxis and Charters. He also provides bach accommodation and – thanks to the increasing number of island visitors – a lot of water taxi-ing.
Things were slow in the first two years so Lindsay got into commercial fishing for blue cod to keep things ‘‘ticking over’’ through the winter. But this year he had been ‘‘absolutely flat out’’.
‘‘I’m doing exactly what my mum and dad used to do, they did mostly weekend charters, and they were booked 18 months in advance.’’
He has had just eight days without bookings since Boxing Day, and they were spent carrying out boat maintenance. He has employed another skipper fulltime to meet the demand and has had to turn customers away when he is fully booked.
‘‘We just haven’t had time to fish.’’
Lindsay reckons D’Urville will soon need to adapt to meet the growing visitor demand.
Aside from Lindsay’s bach, there are just a handful of places to stay on D’Urville. There are five baches listed on Airbnb, the community hall is available for hire, and there is a Department of Conservation campground at Greville Harbour.
The D’Urville Wilderness Resort, formerly the Elkington family homestead, is the only dedicated accommodation on the island. It has room for up to 39 people.
The resort is run by newcomers to the island, Dennis and Judith Andreassend, who took over the lease last April.
Nestled in Catherine Cove, the resort looks out across Admiralty Bay, toward the mainland, and is home to the only eatery on the island. A welcome stop for boaties in need of a cold drink.
Inside the cafe, the phone rings. ‘‘Dennis from the Wilderness’’ he answers.
A butcher by trade, Dennis is originally from Golden Bay. He and Judith spent many years selling cars in Nelson, then Christchurch, before making the move to D’Urville.
The couple have long had a holiday home in Pelorus Sound and spent considerable time in the area.
The Andreassends had long wanted to pursue a hospo venture and the D’Urville opportunity was simply too good to pass up.
‘‘Do this food and beverage thing in a city, no way, but out here it’s different,’’ Dennis says.
‘‘I treat it like it’s not our place, it’s their place. Whether they come for one day, three days or a week.’’
They both enjoy meeting people and hearing their stories.
Dennis says people come to the island to do the fishing and hunting they’d always wanted to, for rest and relaxation and to walk the many tracks and gaze at the stars. They also come for the isolation.
The switch to island life has taken some adjustment. The isolation means it takes a bit longer to get supplies in and rubbish out.
Judith travels into Nelson once a week to buy food for the resort, and on a recent trip to stock up on supplies, the checkout girl asked her if she was preparing for a party. When Judith said she lived on d’Urville, the young girl had no idea where it was.
She isn’t alone. For some, the perception remains that the 37-kilometre long island is difficult to access.
Indeed the journey to French Pass from Nelson, the closest town, takes two hours and is narrow and windy in parts. But it also happens to be one of the most scenic peninsula roads in New Zealand.
But if the road isn’t a deterrent, then thoughts of entering the water near the notoriously dangerous pass itself is. A swirling mass of water, it has the fastest tidal flows in New Zealand, reaching speeds of up to four metres a second.
From French Pass, a boat to the nearby jetty in Kapowai Bay takes around 15 minutes, but the crossing isn’t possible in bad weather.
The island didn’t have a road until 1957, but even so, many of its residents have homes without a road to their front door.
That is not the case for Terry and Sue Savage who live in Kupe Bayon the western side of the island, but it is for their neighbours Pip and Jeanette Aplin, who need to walk across the beach to get home.
The Savages bought their home in the late 80s and used it as a bach for several years before deciding to live on the island permanently.
They have also witnessed changes on the island in the past few decades. Sue says the increased accessibility means people on the island are much more mobile.
The couple used to collect visitors from Kapowai by car, but Aston’s barge now meant people could drive themselves to Kupe Bay, a journey which takes around 40 minutes from Kapowai.
He’s calculated that from their house to Nelson and back it is 322 kilometres. It’s a journey the couple make every few months, sometimes more frequently if the need arises. Like many residents, they have a vehicle on the island and one at French Pass, that way they only need to hop on a boat to get to the mainland.
The couple enjoy the solitude on the island and the company of others, but they say they are equally happy on their own.
‘‘We haven’t shot each other yet, put it that way,’’ Sue says.
‘‘I think it is a different sort of person that lives here; you like the space and the sea.’’