Cruising New Zealand's West Coast Sounds: Fiord Tourism in the Tasman World c.1870–1910

Abstract

The hugely popular summer cruise tours of the West Coast Sounds in the South Island of New Zealand reveal a colonial history of leisured mobility and landscape appreciation common to New Zealand and Australia. Cruising the Sounds was a practice imbued with privilege, exclusivity, emotional upliftment and wonder, generating shared attachments to wilderness space. This culture of maritime tourism offers new insights into the mobile practices which shaped the Tasman World, and points to the centrality of ships and shipping routes as spaces of transcolonial history.

Notes

*I am grateful to Julia Martínez for her ongoing engagement with this research and thank her and Georgine Clarsen for commenting on earlier versions of this article. Thanks also to the journal's editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive critique and helpful suggestions. This article started life as a paper presented at the symposium ‘Colonial Otago’ at the University of Otago in February 2011. I thank audience members for their questions and comments at that early stage.

¹The ‘transcolonial’ refers generally to the study of historical connections between colonies, rather than comparative work where colonies are more readily framed as bounded, distinct or self-contained. Together with new models of transnational history, the transcolonial highlights the interconnected spaces of imperial geography. For example, Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy, eds, Decentring Empire: Britain, India, and the Transcolonial World (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006).

²John Ryan, ‘“Le Président des Terres Australes”: Charles de Brosses and the French Enlightenment Beginnings of Oceanic Anthropology’, Journal of Pacific History 27, no. 2 (2002): 172.

³John Ryan, ‘“Le Président des Terres Australes”: Charles de Brosses and the French Enlightenment Beginnings of Oceanic Anthropology’, Journal of Pacific History 27, no. 2 (2002): 180.

⁴Donald Denoon, ‘Re-membering Australasia: A Repressed Memory’, Australian Historical Studies 34, no. 122 (2003): 293.

⁵ Official Record of the Proceedings and Debates of the Australasian Federation Conference, 1890 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1890), 25.

⁶ Official Record of the Proceedings and Debates of the Australasian Federation Conference, 1890 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1890), 25. See also Philippa Mein Smith, ‘New Zealand Federation Commissioners in Australia: One Past, Two Historiographies’, Australian Historical Studies 34, no. 122 (2003): 312.

⁷Philippa Mein Smith, ‘The Tasman World’, in The New Oxford History of New Zealand, ed. Giselle Byrnes (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2009), 298.

⁸James Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Auckland: Penguin, 1996), 129–37; James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 46–52.

⁹Philippa Mein Smith, ‘Mapping Australasia’, History Compass 7, no. 4 (2009): 15.

¹⁰Rollo Arnold, ‘The Dynamics and Quality of Trans-Tasman Migration, 1885–1910’, Australian Economic History Review 26, no. 1 (1985): 1.

¹¹Rollo Arnold, ‘The Dynamics and Quality of Trans-Tasman Migration, 1885–1910’, Australian Economic History Review 26, no. 1 (1985): 5.

¹²Judith Binney, ‘Tuki's Universe’, in Tasman Relations: New Zealand and Australia, 1788–1988, ed. Keith Sinclair (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1987), 15–33.

¹³Rollo Arnold, ‘Some Australasian Aspects of New Zealand Life, 1890–1913’, New Zealand Journal of History 4, no. 1 (1970): 58.

¹⁴I am influenced here by Tony Ballantyne, ‘On Place, Space and Mobility in Nineteenth Century New Zealand’, New Zealand Journal of History 45, no. 1 (2011): 54–6.

¹⁵Kirsty Ross indicates that translating the ‘nature of New Zealand into a national culture’ was really only a twentieth-century project and even then it was hampered by widespread lack of interest: see Going Bush: New Zealanders and Nature in the Twentieth Century (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008).

¹⁶Frank Broeze, ‘Distance Tamed: Steam Navigation to Australia and New Zealand from Its Beginnings to the Outbreak of the Great War’, Journal of Transport History 10, no. 1 (1989): 27, n.1; Frank Broeze, ‘Private Enterprise and Public Policy: Merchant Shipping in Australia and New Zealand, 1788–1992’, Australian Economic History Review 32, no. 2 (1992): 8–32.

¹⁷Ballantyne, 61.

¹⁸A fiord is formed by glaciation, whereas a sound is usually formed by the sea flooding a river valley, so the Sounds in southwest New Zealand are technically fiords. I follow the terminology of the day, and most often refer to them as sounds.

¹⁹Cited in New Zealand Herald, 16 December 1874, 3.

²⁰ Argus, 22 December 1871, 7. There was a brief but unsuccessful attempt in the 1870s to establish a colony at Martins Bay, north of Milford Sound.

²¹As expounded in British travel narratives: see Peter Fjågesund and Ruth A. Symes, The Northern Utopia: British Perceptions of Norway in the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003), 155–265.

²² New Zealand Official Yearbook (Wellington: Government Printer, 1893), http://www3.stats.govt.nz/New_Zealand_Official_Yearbooks/1893/NZOYB_1893.html#id3A902F8.

²³ Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, 25 February 1874, 26.

²⁴ Otago Daily Times, 13 February 1874, 2.

²⁵ Otago Daily Times, 28 January 1876, 3.

²⁶Gavin McLean, The Southern Octopus: The Rise of a Shipping Empire (Wellington: New Zealand Ship and Marine Society, 1990), 41.

²⁷ Sydney Daily Telegraph, 20 May 1882.

²⁸ New Zealand Herald, 25 January 1879, 6 (original emphasis).

²⁹ Star, 9 November 1882, 3.

³⁰ Evening Post, 15 December 1900, 6.

³¹ Tuapeka Times, 28 February 1883, 5.

³² Otago Witness, 31 March 1883, 8.

³³ West Coast Times, 9 January 1900, 2.

³⁴ Grey River Argus, 1 January 1900, 4.

³⁵ Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March 1879, 7.

³⁶ Otago Daily Times, 19 April 1889, 3.

³⁷Hocken Collections (hereafter HC), USSCo. Records, AG-292-005-004/067, T. W. Whitson, 7 September 1900.

³⁸ New Zealand Herald, 8 March 1877, 2.

³⁹ New Zealand Herald, 8 March 1877, 2.

⁴⁰Arnold, ‘Some Australasian Aspects’, 58.

⁴¹ Australasian Sketcher, 29 December 1887, 200.

⁴²Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths, ‘Environmental History in Australasia’, Environment and History 10, no. 4 (2004): 455.

⁴³ Press, 11 January 1890, 4 (reprinted from the Argus) (my emphasis).

⁴⁴ Press, 11 January 1890, 4 (reprinted from the Argus) (my emphasis).

⁴⁵Cited in Jane Stafford and Mark Williams, Maoriland: New Zealand Literature, 1872–1914 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006), 199.

⁴⁶Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 269.

⁴⁷Julia Horne, The Pursuit of Wonder: How Australia's Landscape Was Explored, Nature Discovered, and Tourism Unleashed (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005), 44.

⁴⁸Fjågesund and Symes, 305.

⁴⁹T. W. Whitson, ‘The West Coast Sounds’, Summer Cruise to the West Coast Sounds of New Zealand per S.S. Waikare (Dunedin: USSCo., 1907), 15.

⁵⁰J. C. Richmond, ‘Opening of the South-Western Lakes and Sounds’, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR), H-20 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1887), 2 (my emphasis).

⁵¹David Grant, ‘Southland Places—Fiordland's Coast’, Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 2 March 2009, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/southland-places/10.

⁵²Cited in Fjågesund and Symes, 307.

⁵³Stafford and Williams, 207.

⁵⁴ Argus, 22 December 1871, 7.

⁵⁵ Otago Daily Times, 13 February 1874, 2

⁵⁶ Poverty Bay Herald, 20 April 1894, 2.

⁵⁷Horne, 12, 15.

⁵⁸B. Smith, ix; Horne, 16.

⁵⁹ Otago Daily Times, 13 February 1874, 2.

⁶⁰ Evening Post, 13 February 1877, 2.

⁶¹ Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1899, 4.

⁶²Lydia Wevers, Country of Writing: Travel Writing and New Zealand 1809–1900 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002), 10.

⁶³Fjågesund and Symes, 332.

⁶⁴Horne, 225. See also Jim Davidson and Peter Spearritt, Holiday Business: Tourism in Australia since 1870 (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2000), 12–13.

⁶⁵ New Zealand Herald, 25 January 1879, 6 (my emphasis).

⁶⁶ Brisbane Courier, 3 April 1890, 2.

⁶⁷Eric Kaufmann, ‘“Naturalizing the Nation”: The Rise of Naturalistic Nationalism in the United States and Canada’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 4 (1998): 666–95.

⁶⁸William McHutcheson, Camp-life in Fiordland, New Zealand: A Tale of the Sutherland Falls (Wellington: Government Publisher, 1892), 131–2.

⁶⁹Wellington City Archives (WCA), USSCo. Records, AF080:141:7, William H. Alley to Captain Crawshaw, 17 January 1905.

⁷⁰ Inangahua Times, 23 March 1883, 2.

⁷¹James Hingston, Seeing the Sounds (Dunedin: USSCo., 1883), 18, 27; Otago Daily Times, 1 February 1899, 1.

⁷²Lydia Wevers, ‘The Pleasure of Walking’, New Zealand Journal of History 38, no. 1 (2004): 47.

⁷³Fjågesund and Symes, 148, 335.

⁷⁴ Otago Witness, 10 June 1897. In the sixteenth century Kāti Māmoe migrated from the east coast of the North Island, spreading as far south as Fouveaux Strait at the bottom of the South Island. A century later, Kāi Tahu also migrated south and after a series of inter-tribal clashes and strategic intermarriages, Kāi Tahu were dominant across the South Island by the late eighteenth century.

⁷⁵ Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1899, 4.

⁷⁶Hingston, 22.

⁷⁷John Hall, Notes of a Trip to the West Coast Sounds of New Zealand. On board the S.S. ‘Hawea’ in December, 1877 (Timaru: Timaru Herald, 1878), 6.

⁷⁸ Gippsland Times, 1 October 1883, 1.

⁷⁹Hingston, 1.

⁸⁰ Evening Post, 25 January 1900, 5.

⁸¹ Press, 20 February 1889, 6.

⁸² Otago Witness, 5 February 1902, 56; HC, USSCo. Records, AG-292-005-004/068, January 1902.

⁸³ Otago Witness, 3 February 1909, 18.

⁸⁴Whitson, ‘The West Coast Sounds’, 26.

⁸⁵ Otago Witness, 31 March 1883, 8; Ballantyne, 61.

⁸⁶ New Zealand Herald, 15 February 1879, 6.

⁸⁷ Morning Bulletin, 22 April 1884, 2.

⁸⁸ Otago Witness, 8 April 1903, 24.

⁸⁹ Otago Witness [Supplement], 11 July 1885, 3.

⁹⁰ Otago Daily Times, 21 February 1890, 6.

⁹¹ Star, 15 October 1904, 1.

⁹²Louisa Milne, ‘Fiordland—National Park? The Status of Fiordland before 1952’ (BA Hons dissertation, University of Otago, 2002), 65.

⁹³Department of Lands, ‘Scenery Preservation’, AJHR, C-6 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1907), 2–3.

⁹⁴Tracey Banivanua Mar, ‘Carving Wilderness: Queensland's National Parks and the Unsettling of Emptied Lands, 1890–1910’, in Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity, ed. Banivanua Mar and Penelope Edmonds (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 76.

⁹⁵WCA, USSCo. Records, AF080:183:1, Liggins to Mills, 23 December 1908; HC, USSCo. Records, AG-292-004-004/010, Holdsworth to Liggins, 28 January 1909.

⁹⁶ Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 1899, 3; HC, USSCo. Records, AG-292-005-004/067, Richardson to Managing Director, 12 February 1900.

⁹⁷ West Coast Times, 27 February 1905, 4.

⁹⁸ Poverty Bay Herald, 11 February 1909, 4.

⁹⁹ Star, 15 February 1909, 2; Grey River Argus, 19 November 1909, 4.

¹⁰⁰ Press, 6 February 1909, 10.

¹⁰¹ Illustrated Sydney News, 31 October 1889, 24; Ashburton Guardian, 13 January 1910, 4.

¹⁰² Poverty Bay Herald, 29 January 1914, 7.

¹⁰³WCA, USSCo. Records, AF080:331:6, Aiken to Ritchie, 18 January 1933.

¹⁰⁴Philippa Mein Smith, Peter Hempenstall and Shaun Goldfinch, Remaking the Tasman World (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2008).

¹⁰⁵Mein Smith, ‘The Tasman World’, 316.

¹⁰⁶ New Zealand Tablet, 4 February 1898, 3.