ARCHAEOLOGY
Senior archaeologist joins expedition to remote Fiordland sites Taking part in an expedition into Taiari / Chalky Inlet and Rakituma / Preservation Inlet has given Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Senior Archaeologist, Frank van der Heijden, the rare opportunity to visit some of Fiordland’s most remote archaeological sites WORDS: Rosemary Baird
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IMAGE: Chris Kwak
rank recently joined a six-day expedition which ventured into Fiordland to film content for Toitū Otago Settlers Museum’s second Furthest Frontier documentary series. The other members of the team came from Ōraka Aparima Rūnaka, the Department of Conservation and Otago Museum.
The team travelled by boat into the remote inlets to visit and record both Māori and Pākehā archaeological sites. “The first task of the archaeology team was to try and find these sites,” says Frank. “They were overgrown and sometimes it could take us several hours to find the site. Then we would take a GPS location as most of these sites had not been visited for about 40 years and had never been recorded by GPS.”
The expedition visited the first shore-based whaling station in New Zealand at Port Bunn in Cuttle Cove. Another memorable site was Te Oneroa gold mining settlement. Te Onera would have had up to a thousand residents at the end of the 19th century. Everything had to be brought in by ship, including brick chimneys, metal furnaces, boilers and steam engines.
The team also visited early Māori rock art, sealing camps and the hulk of the 19th century government steamer Stella. “We had long days, and did a lot of physical work, bush bashing through to sites, but the whole experience was fantastic,” says Frank “It was amazing to be so far south, in areas where people don’t usually get to explore.”
“At Te Oneroa, you could see the remains of the piles from the settlement wharf, and in the bush we found remains from the settlement: ceramics, bricks and metal,” says Frank. “You could see how nature has so quickly taken over the sites of these once busy settlements. It was incredible to think that in the 1820s Fiordland had some of the highest rates of European settlement in all of New Zealand.”
According to Toitū Exhibition Developer and Expedition Director, William McKee, series two of the documentary Furthest Frontier will be available to the public later this year. “A large majority of New Zealanders are never going to get to these remote places, so we really wanted to bring these stories to the people.” he says. n
Frank van der Heijden inspects the hulk of the Stella in North Port, Chalky Inlet.
HŌTOKE • WINTER 2022
Heritage Quarterly
15
