Matiu / Somes Island is the largest of three islands in the northern half of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand. The island is 24.9 hectares (62 acres) in area, and lies 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) south of the suburb of Petone and the mouth of the Hutt River.
Matiu / Somes Island was used as a place of refuge by pre-colonial Māori. Middens and other remnants of habitation have been found on the island. There is also a long and varied European history. The island was used for human quarantine from 1840 until the 1920s. Ships arriving in Wellington Harbour with infectious passengers or crew would disembark them at Matiu / Somes Island for care and treatment before berthing in the city. During both World War I and World War II, "enemy aliens", including long-term residents of New Zealand who originated from enemy countries, were interned on the island. Anti-aircraft gun emplacements were also built on the island during World War II and their remains can be seen today. The island was used for animal quarantine from 1864 until 1995. A maximum security animal quarantine station was built in 1968.
The island's environment had become degraded during its long period of use for quarantine and defence purposes. However, in 1981 work began to restore the forest cover. Following more than 30 years of environmental restoration and the translocation of species, the island is now home to many native birds, invertebrates, reptiles and plants. Since 1995, Matiu / Somes Island has been designated as a scientific and historic reserve. For many years the public was banned from visiting the island due to its role as a human and animal quarantine station, but visitors are now welcome and may stay overnight on the island.
In 2009, ownership of the island was transferred to the Māori collective Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika, as part of the settlement of claims against the Crown for breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. The island is managed by the Department of Conservation.
Toponymy
Legend has it that Matiu and the nearby Mākaro island received their original Māori names from Kupe, the semi-legendary first navigator to reach New Zealand and return home with knowledge of the new land. He named them after his two daughters (or, in some versions of the tale, nieces) when he first entered the harbour around .
After European settlement, the island was known for over a century as Somes Island. In 1839 it fell under the control of the New Zealand Company along with much of the greater Wellington Region. The island was renamed after Joseph Somes, the company's deputy-governor and financier at the time. In 1997, after 10 months of investigation and consideration of submissions by the public, the New Zealand Geographic Board assigned the official bilingual name of "Matiu/Somes Island" in recognition of the island's European and Māori histories. Ward Island was renamed as Mākaro/Ward Island at the same time. Since then the board has adopted the formatting convention of placing a space before and after the slash, so the official name is now written as "Matiu / Somes Island".
Geography The island is in area, and lies south of the suburb of Petone and the mouth of the Hutt River. Just off the northern tip of Matiu / Somes Island lies tiny Mokopuna Island, also known as Leper Island. The much smaller Mākaro / Ward Island is about southeast of Matiu / Somes Island.
A distinct gully runs from the south of the former quarantine station and terminates at the sea on the southern end of the island between two largely forested ridges on either side to the east and west. The gully floor forms a swamp, but an ephemeral watercourse flows through it during periods of heavy rain. A 1942 map shows a small dam across the creek.
Despite being surrounded by sea water, Matiu / Somes Island has access to fresh water from the Waiwhetu artesian aquifer. Water from the Hutt River infiltrates into porous gravels in the vicinity of Taita Gorge, with between 3.8 and 5.7 million litres per hour flowing from the bed of the river into the underlying gravels between Taita Gorge and Melling. South of Melling, a layer of clay forms an impervious cap (or aquiclude) that holds the artesian water underground and causes it to build up pressure as it flows through the gravel layer southwards towards Wellington Harbour. The pressurised water can rise to the surface if the fresh water layer is penetrated with a bore hole. There are also artesian gravels beneath much of Wellington Harbour, in some places hundreds of metres deep, and they extend out to the present harbour entrance. The water level in the harbour was much lower 20,000 years ago, and the ancient Hutt River used to flow down a paleochannel to the east of the Matiu / Somes Island ridge as far as present-day Kilbirnie. The Waiwhetu aquifer flows under the sea bed from the direction of the Hutt River to the harbour mouth via the paleochannel. Matiu / Somes Island gets its fresh water from a bore sunk into the aquifer just offshore at the main wharf. In February 2016, the Department of Conservation temporarily restricted access to the island because a long dry summer had lowered the volume and pressure of water from the aquifer, requiring strict water conservation.
The island has three benches or platforms at 30, 45 and 75metres above the current mean sea level. The origin of these benches is uncertain. Similar levels are found on various ridges around the harbour, and the flat top of Makaro / Ward Island corresponds to the 30 metre level. They are likely to be interglacial wave cut benches that have been uplifted. No marine deposits have been found on the benches, but it is possible that they result from a combination of fluvial processes and tectonic uplift. If they were wave cut benches any marine deposits have been eroded away. The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake raised Matiu / Somes Island by about 1.5metres. The perimeters of both Matiu / Somes and Mokopuna Island have shore platforms that were eroded by the sea prior to the 1855 earthquake. There are some remnants of an earlier platform at 2.4 to 3m above the present mean sea level. A rock arch and platform at the northern end of Matiu / Somes Island was formed by the action of the sea, but was raised above sea-level by successive earthquakes, including the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake. The arch now appears as a hole in the rock, above sea level.
Somes Rock is an underwater pinnacle off the southwest point of Matiu / Somes island.
Climate
Geology
Matiu / Somes Island and the surrounding landscape of Wellington is dominated by grey sandstone and darker mudstone sequences, together commonly known as greywacke. In the harbour surrounding the island, the greywacke basement is overlain unconformably by solifluction debris and river gravels, then shelly marine silts, and finally artesian gravels that are capped with shelly marine silts.
Matiu / Somes Island is an uplifted block of greywacke, a horst structure thought to be part of a drowned ridge pushed up between faults that run northeast–southwest close to the west and east sides of the island. The faults extend from just offshore of Petone beach to about 1km south of the island. The greywacke at Matiu / Somes Island, and the surrounding Wellington landscape, is Late Triassic in age and assigned to the Rakaia Terrane, one of several terranes that collectively make up the Torlesse Composite Terrane (also known as the Torlesse Supergroup).The eastern half of the North Island, from the Bay of Plenty to Wellington, has a Torlesse Composite Terrane basement. A tube fossil (Torlessia mackayi )Belongs to the order Foraminiferida; found in Torlesse Supergroup, Rakaia Terrane (North Otago, inland Canterbury, Wellington) and Taringatura Group (Southland); age range: Late Triassic (237–201 Ma); slender, tapering, slightly curved, cylindrical tube fossils; pale grey to white; smooth; commonly squashed with deformation fractures along tube length (20–70 mm long); up to 5 mm wide; original shell composed of agglutinated mineral grains; originally sticking upright in soft seafloor in deep water and filter feeding on plankton and suspended organic matter; the most common fossil found in greywacke. has been found on the island. Although it has not been formally identified, it has been documented with an age range of 215-205Ma (Late Triassic). Tube fossils have also been found at other nearby locations such as Princess Bay and Sinclair Head, along the shore platform of Wellington's south coast.
History
Māori history During the 18th century Ngāti Ira, an East Coast iwi, settled in Petone and around the eastern shores of the harbour. They built two pā on the island but there was no permanent settlement on the island due to limited resources there. Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from Taranaki drove Ngāti Ira from their settlements in the 1820s.
In November 1835 Ngāti Mutunga people, affiliated to Te Āti Awa, seized the ship Lord Rodney at Wellington. The crew were tied up and the Lord Rodney's captain John Harewood was forced or bribed to take a group of hundreds of Māori to the Chatham Islands. To ensure Harewood's compliance, his chief mate was held hostage on Matiu / Somes Island. There was no Māori occupation on Matiu / Somes from about 1840.
Archaeological sites At the northern end of the island on a site with steep cliffs there was the Te Moana–a–kura pā which contained terraces and middens. Haowhenua pā was built in the middle of the island, where the quarantine station was sited, but the only remaining sign of occupation is a midden. The midden, which was underneath the hospital building, was uncovered and excavated during building work in 1999. Faunal remains included shellfish (species from the mainland), fish and bird bones.
European history
At various times throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the island hosted quarantine facilities for both human immigrants and animals, and enemy alien internees during wartime.
Human quarantine In 1868 the island was declared a quarantine ground and used to isolate passengers from a ship carrying smallpox. When the immigrant ship England arrived in 1872 carrying several passengers with smallpox, passengers and crew were quartered in makeshift accommodation on the island. On other occasions, new arrivals would spend ten minutes in a smokehouse of chlorine, potassium nitrate and sulphur fumes for de-lousing. During the influenza pandemic of 1918–1920, a few people were quarantined on Matiu / Somes Island, but there was general agreement that the facilities were completely inadequate. The government then built accommodation for hundreds more people. In 1920, some passengers and crew from the ship Mahana were quarantined on Matiu / Somes Island with scarlet fever, but the quarantine station fell out of use after this. In 1935 the Government announced that it would reduce the number of quarantine beds on the island from 600 to about 50, but the Ministry of Health continued to restrict access to the island. In 1946, after World War II had ended, the island was offered back to the Ministry of Health but it declined to retake control.
Forty-five people are known to be buried on the island, mostly immigrants who arrived in the 1870s. In 1971, individual gravestones were removed from the overgrown cemetery and replaced with a large memorial. In January 2000, four of the old headstones were retrieved from storage and placed next to the communal memorial.
Animal quarantine