Stewart Island - Day 7: Friday the 29th of April

So begins the second day of the Rakiura – Stewart Island Great Walk.

The amazing kiwi experience that Robin, myself and some random guy called Russel had last night at 2.30am was the talk of the hut in the morning, there were quite a few jealous people I must say, we were very lucky – but Robin with his ranger hearing did give us a great advantage.

As we are walking in April it gets dark around 5pm and I wanted us to be away early in the morning so we don’t get caught out walking in the dark near the end of the day, and today is a minimum of a six hour walk combined with the fact that we keep stopping to look at tree’s and birds we don’t go very fast.

The first 45 minutes of today were spent back tracking over our footsteps from yesterday to the junction with the path that crosses to the other side of the island.

Again the Stewart Island bush really surprises me with just so much wildlife with fantails, tomtits, kākāriki and bellbirds keeping us company as we walk along with all their noise.

Stein tramping

Also this part of Stewart Island is mostly regrowth as there was lots of rimu trees that were milled a hundred years ago. Also we passed several historical relic’s in the bush, such as these large steam powered boilers and engines which were used to crash rimu tree trucks through the bush and then lower then down on tram lines back to the coast. It’s quite strange seeing large steam engines sitting in the middle of the bush.

This second day of the tramp is the only day with an up and down which is normally the hall mark of a New Zealand tramp, but it was only 200 meters up and being a Great Walk style so is quite easy through quite muddy in places – but nothing to challenging.

Julianne collecting rimu tree seeds for a snack

By early afternoon Robin had pushed through what I call The Wall as he did on our previous tramp and in doing so he took off like a rocket. So Robin and Julianne disappeared into the distance while Stein and I took our time.

Stein was doing well for only his second day of tramping and he is still getting used to it and the uphill’s were challenging. We were still walking at 4pm, and it was beginning to slowly get dark which was slightly worrying but I knew we were not that far from the hut even through it took us almost another hour to arrive.

Once at the hut it was a quiet evening relaxing with more card games. After Robin and I found a wild kiwi at the last hut we didn’t feel under any pressure out looking for kiwi again. Also this hut has the tree-line really close, whereas last night there was plenty of open space around the hut which makes finding kiwi’s easier.

Relaxing at the beach after arriving at the hut with the sun setting in the distance