Milford Sound

Milford Sound is about 290km from Queenstown and the drive takes arouund 4 hours. The stretch between Te Anau and The Sound is New Zealand’s most dangerous road and visitors and tour operators are encouraged to travel there by coach to reduce the traffic and leave the narrow, twisting and turning roads to someone with the experience of dealing with them.

Milford Sound is located in the Fiordland National Park. At 1.2 million hectares it is the largest of New Zealand’s National parks. it was awarded world heritage stars in 1986. Much of it consists of temperate rainforest clinging to the sides of steep mountains. Much is uncharted, it is estimated that 75% of it has never been walked on by a human.

The journey into the park takes you past some incredible scenery and a series of lakes that are known to reflect the surrounding landscape hence their name, Mirror Lakes.

Technically speaking Milford Sound is actually a fiord not a sound as it was formed by glaciers. A Sound on the other hand results when a river valley is flooded by the sea. The early settlers to the region were perhaps not up to date with their geographical terms so the name stuck and has remained unchanged.

Milford Sound is the wettest place in New Zealand with an average of 250 inches of rain a year. It rains on about 200 days a year so you are more likely to visit on a wet day than a dry one. Our visit was no exception, it rained for the duration of our visit.

The coach from Queenstown arrives in the early afternoon and passengers immediately board a boat for a two hour cruise. The journey takes you along the sound and out into the Tasman Sea and back again, a round trip of approximately 30km. if you are lucky enough to do it in the rain you see the waterfalls, and there are many of them, in full flow. If its dry then you see the majesty of the mountain peaks but only two waterfalls. We got the former, most of the peaks were shrouded in mist giving the place an etherial, ghostly feel. Very atmospheric.

On our trip we were lucky to see a pod of Bottlenosed dolphins both on our journey out of the sound and again on our return. Indeed on our return one swam right alongside the vessel and you were able to see just how big this particular species of dolphin is. Seals were also in evidence, basking on the rocks and not very lively at all.

Despite its isolation a procession of coaches head into the national park every day. One can only wonder what the traffic congestion would be like if everyone went by car. In total it is a twelve hour round trip with a couple of breaks along the way. A long and tiring day but well worth it.

New Zealand’s Flora and Fauna

I must confess to being rather ignorant about the flora and fauna of New Zealand before arriving here however it didn’t take very long before we began to realise what a unique country this is.

To understand the uniqueness of the country plants and animals you must first know something about its formation. The supercontinent of Gondawana existed over 500 million years ago and it started to separate around 180 million years ago. This break up formed the parts of the world we today know as Australia, Antarctica, Africa, South America, India and New Zealand. New Zealand became isolated around 90 million years ago and it has been out there on its own ever since. As a result it does not have any native land mammals with the exception of a couple of species of bat. Indeed the first humans did not arrive in New Zealand until the thirteenth century with the arrival of explorers from Polynesia.

Approximately 65 million years ago there was a mass extinction event that wiped out 75% of the plants and animal species on earth, including the dinosaurs. The removal of top predators meant that small mammals could evolve rapidly to fill all the newly created empty habitats. The age of the mammals had begun but New Zealands isolation meant that they couldn’t get there. All land mammals in New Zealand today were introduced by humans. In the absence of native mammals the birds flourished. With no natural predators it didn’t matter if the birds could fly or not so gradually, over time, many lost the ability to fly. Much of the bird population was flightless and ground dwelling.

Human settlers in New Zealand began introducing mammals. Cattle, sheep and goats were highly successful and profitable but other introductions were less so. in 1857 1000 Australian possum were brought to the country for their pelts. By the 1980s their numbers were estimated at around 70 million and the environmental effects disastrous. Possums are carriers of TB .They also grazed on native plants which had no adaptations to grazing and they also ate the eggs and chicks of flightless birds which could not escape them. Stoats and ferrets which were. introduced to try and control rabbits also added to the problem. Now birdsong and native birds in the forests are rare. Control measures are now in place to reduce numbers and there has been some success but there is still a long way to go. Native birds are being reintroduced into areas of forest which have been declared predator free.

Isolation has meant that New Zealand has developed a unique native flora. Most native trees are evergreens, species of deciduous trees having been introduced by settlers. There is a relatively high number of species of fern for a temperate climate. As you drive the west coast rainforests you can not fail to be impressed by the number of ferns and their size. Indeed New Zealand national sports teams have the silver fern as their emblem. Mosses an liverworts also abound. Many plants are larger than similar forms elsewhere. Forests are dense with a large under canopy, it is relatively easy to get lost if you stray from a track in such areas. Some of the forests are old and it is easy to see where the inspiration for the Ents in Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings came from.