Dave Wilson [the former keeper] welcomed me to the island for the first time in 1992. Walking up the track to the remaining chimney of the old quarantine hospital on top of the hill, Dave confided that he was often lonely and thought that, although he loved the island, it was probably better suited to a family. He smiled cheekily at me and suggested that I would be a good person for the job and the transitions that would be needed in the near future.
Nothing was further from my mind.
In 1994, Dave died suddenly, on the island after scrubbing the seagull krill droppings off the jetty before a boat load of visitors arrived. Eighteen months later at the end of 1995, we were approached by the St Martin Island Community to provide three months’ relief for Russell Kennett, who along with Catriona Matheson, had been taking care of the island since Dave’s death.
It was an unexpected request but felt quite interesting as a short-term option.
I thought the island was a reserve and we had two cats. We were assured that it was only a recreation reserve and any family would be likely to include a cat or dog, so that was not a problem. I imagined it would mainly be me doing the island work, and I knew nothing about boats or sheep, both of which seemed pretty essential skills for this job. Put it this way, I would never have dreamt of applying for the position.
“You will soon learn,” was the breezy reply. The Community took a punt on us and we decided to return the favour.
With that began another brilliant chapter in our lives.
We arrived on Quarantine Island, Kamau Taurua in early January 1996 to fill in for the three months. One of the cats, Cheetah, was confined in Snoopy the little hooded rat’s glass cage. Snoopy was up my sleeve and our other cat Deli, sat a little nervously on Bryony’s knee in the boat.
I made the first of many boating mistakes by stretching over to place the cat and cage on the landing, and found myself at full stretch across a fast-widening gap between the boat and the jetty. The cage was teetering ominously above me as the inevitable happened and I face planted in the bay expecting the sizeable cage to land on my head at any moment.
Snoopy, rudely woken from his comfortable snooze, found himself drowning in my jersey. He scrabbled out of my neckline to perch on the top of my head just above the waterline, while I was forced to realise the foolishness of wearing gumboots in a boat. Dougie wasn’t sure who to help first, the cat, the rat or his semi-submerged wife.
Welcome to the island, I thought to myself, soaking wet and pleased that this was going to be a relatively short adventure after such an unpromising start.
Five years later I was surprised to find that we were in our element on the island, just as Dave had pictured. We didn’t know much about farming sheep or fencing. Bryony and Douglas [my daughter and husband] would have to leave most days to go to school, and yet, like Dave, we could feel an excitement and thrill at just being there, cleaning, planting, gathering and cutting wood, baking, making endless cups of tea for visitors, reloving the garden, and rushing out to watch the regular sea lion when he played in the bay.
We’d pretty quickly adjusted to going outside to the long drop even when the wind whistled through the cracked boards and up our backsides, making it hard to keep the toilet paper from spiralling around the rafters.
We were at the mercy of the weather and it could be wild. Gales, high, wild seas and a new mooring system, prone to becoming weighed down with seaweed, added adventure to the mix and gave me many opportunities to swim or kayak out to clear it off before we could pull the boat in to the jetty.
Weather shapes every single day. We are intimate with sun, rain, wind, mist and gales from every direction. The rare misty days when both sides of the harbour are blanked out and I am unable to see further than my own nose, provide time to reflect. Other days when the sea is driven up the beaches, eating into the clay banks, I would like to be a sheep setting my woolly backside to the worst of it and waiting it out.
Life demands however that I fight and snarl into the teeth of these gales, checking sheep, donkeys and getting feed up to them before, struggle over, I can snuggle safely inside, hearing it batter the cottage, but for a while not me. A day arrives after such storms when everything begins again, the greys turn blue, the sun fills the harbour and you love it more because it has been hidden for a while.
It is exhilarating to be living this life that takes us out in all weathers, working within it, with it and against it. We get to really feel stuff, are fully engaged and wide awake, listening, noticing and alive.
Extracts from Seaswept: 12 years in Quarantine by Kathy Morrison, the former keeper of Kamau Taurua/ Quarantine Island, Dunedin
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion