The evening we stopped at the Hardwicke settlement on Auckland Island was golden. We’d had a pretty rough ride for the start of the subantarctic voyage, and our plans to explore Musgrave Harbour further south had been stymied by swells. Port Ross was a calm oasis by comparison.

The southern rātā were in full bloom, to everyone’s delight! A soft carpet of red lay underneath the trees as we wandered around the long abandoned settlement. I’ve written about Hardwicke before – you can read my earlier blog which has more details about the why of a subantarctic colony!

The main Auckland Island is a bit lacking in wildlife compared to the nearby predator-free islands. There were korimako singing overhead in the trees, and we did spy a few tūī and tomtits, but it’s generally very quiet. It was nice to just wander in the relatively warm evening light.

My eyes are often drawn to details, and once I had my fill of light filtering through the trees, I went picking along the shoreline for patterns and pictures. Here are my two favourites:

The last one is a very small shard of a plate or bowl that is slowly peeking out through the eroding peat on the shoreline. It seems so much more human than the scattered bricks, even the gravestones. It was handled, used, washed by one of the people who eked out an existence here for two brief years. I felt more of a connection there to the people of the place – wondering what meals had been eaten off it. What dinnertime conversations they’d had. It was a little glimpse into the history of Hardwicke, which is vanishing as the forest regrows around where the roads and the buildings used to be. I’m sure there’s more of these tiny details buried in the peat, and they’ll one day be washed out into the sea.