Well, I heard via the famous Facebook that Claire and her team at Dive HQ Petone were planning a trip to Somes Island but first let me tell you a little about Somes Island.
Matiu/Somes Island, at 24.9 ha (62 acres), is the largest of three islands in the northern half of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand. It lies
3 km (1.9 mi) south of the suburb of Petone and the mouth of the Hutt River, and about 5 km (3.1 mi) northwest of the much smaller Makaro/Ward Island.
Legend has it that both Matiu and Makaro Islands received their original Māori names from Kupe, the semi-legendary first navigator to reach New Zealand and get home again with reports 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 about 1000 years ago.
- The veiw from the top of the island.
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 however, the New Zealand Geographic Board assigned the official bilingual name of Matiu/Somes in recognition of the island’s colourful European and Māori histories.Matiu/Somes became part of Lower Hutt in 1989, and came under the full control of the Department of Conservation (“DOC”) as a scientific and historic reserve in August 1995. The island is free of introduced mammalian predators (such as stoats), an unusual state for an island so close to an urban centre.
Thank you Wikipedia. So now we have got that out of the way lets get back to the story.
Basically, as soon as I saw the opportunity to go and dive the Island, I was in, with both fins!
Word had it from Claire, that the DOC team had also asked us if we could locate a lost winch that was used in the early days of Somes Island.
So now we had the opportunity to dive in a rare location and for a bit of underwater archaeology, this was all too much!
At first, when I arrived at DIVE HQ, it felt like a normal dive day until we started talking about Ferry times and getting to the dock’s. Now it was starting to feel oddly like a big dive day out, but local.. the best of both worlds.. and this feeling went on for the whole trip. It was brilliant.
Getting the gear to the wharf in the Dive HQ Navara and Colin’s Mazda was a breeze. My twin 7ltr’s were raring to get in the water.
After a short trip across to Somes Island during which I noticed that the entire time the depth sounder never went past 20m!
So after I had washed away the idea of doing a twin set dive with a stage and a scooter from Petone foreshore to Somes Island, we arrived at the dock.
A quick unload and we were in the hands of two lovely DOC rangers, not what I was expecting. They went over our dive kits, tents and backpacks looking for any hitchhiker’s that might compromise the Islands very specific ecosystem.
Meticulously done, they then allowed us to step out on to the Island and into the phenomenal weather that Claire had organised with Neptune.
It really was a scorching day just not Scorching Bay..
Bridget carting up the gear to the education house.
We all grabbed what gear we didn’t need for the dive and one of the DOC rangers, Bridget, threw the lot in the back of a small tractor and towed the lot up to ‘Education House’
which was where we would reside for the one night of our Dive Occupation.
Education house was nice. It was clean and simple and without a question had some history.
Possibly too much history as later in the night one of our divers claimed she could hear something heavy being dragged around all night outside her window.
Was it crazy birds dragging around a dive bag? Was it the Ghost of the Nun that was bricked up in the wall? Who knows?
I decided that we should head back there at a later date and investigate further. Now you have possible haunted house, archaeological dive and all on a restricted access Island.
Its just too good!Gearing up for the first dive, Claire and myself threw on our Halcyon kit and Warren got his “Yellow Submarine” camera housing and camera sorted and then we were off down the wharf to jump off into the cool green.. (Most dive trip stories describe it as blue.. but hey this is Welly harbour remember!)
Anyway, no mask and reg, in I jumped into the water and stared to cool off after fairly heating up in my dry suit on the shore.
Its dive on.. we did a quick look for the missing winch but decided that getting the ocean floor clear of rubbish was more important so off we went in cleaning mode and Warren got some video footage of us in action in the murk.
The vis actually cleared up as we soon arrived at 15m, after very little swimming, and it was quite pleasant. Warren found a large jellyfish that he was filming as we hit our turn gas.
Junk collected
There were a sizeable amount of bottles and steel that was salvaged from the sea floor but nothing anywhere nearly as bad as the more publicly accessible wharves in Wellington Harbour. Claire managed to find, with ease, a poor chap’s I-Phone 5 that he had fumbled with on the dock, which then, of course, managed to find a gap in the wood and fell straight into Neptune’s realm… (And no it wasn’t working.. )Everybody was having a great time diving in a brand new location so we decided it would be *“Rude not to” (*Copyright Pete Humphris) go for a second dive. This time it was up to myself and Geoff (GUE Palmy) and Stuart Brown( one of the DIVE HQ pro’s) to locate the Somes Island equivalent of the ‘Ark of the Covenant’. For arguments sake, lets call it ‘The Winch of Destiny’.
Plan was that Geoff would hit the sea floor and hook up a wreck reel to the farthest North wharf pile and we would run an arc sweep with the three of us searching as we went.
As the lads were tying off the line, I went for a bit of a swim around and found a rather large steel set of bars. Swimming back to Stuart, I gave him the signal to “Look over here”.
Within moments,we realized that the steel was connected to the winch! Mission accomplished… and the A-Team was born.. ha ha..
A very old and encrusted winch.
Stuart and myself still had a fair amount of gas left in our tanks. My twin 7s are 14ltrs and Stuart was on a 15ltr steel so it was again.. “Dive dive dive”..
So off we went across the sandy ocean floor in search of treasures or scallops or anything of interest. Sadly we had to suffice with a nice relaxed easy dive.. and believe it or not, this has to be a record for me in Welly. The surface temp in the shallow harbour was 21 degree’s! As we dropped deeper, it was 18 then 16 at 15m but still very impressive Welly!Dive’s done so we all sat back and had some laughs as we talked over the dives. I met some great new friend’s, Colin , Liam , Helen and Sadie, along with the usual crew plus Mike and his wife. It made for an eventful evening and a great BBQ with Stuart, wine in hand, at the helm.
The food was great and so was the company. I had a blast.
The night was still young when we had to get out and go looking for the Giant Weta’s and Tuatara’s which roam the Island at night along with the Nun from the brickwork and the guy, with the ski mask and machete, who we asked for directions in the dark. Ha ha.. that last joke on the night was received with some “Whaaat”’s and “Ohhh stop it Rob’s”. Ha ha.. good times!
Anyway, Stuart, Liam, Claire and the rest went off Tuatara and Weta hunting as I tried to get some night start shots from the Island but sadly the city lights were a bit overpowering, still a beautiful night.
I watched the lights of the crew wandering around in the dark from my elevated position high on the island near the old WWII constructed bunkers.The wind picked up slightly and the sky really grew dark as the witching hour drew closer and the days events were starting to catch up on me.
All our divers.
We had had Giant Weta’s, lost winches, seagull’s dive bombing us to protect their nests, WWII bunkers, lighthouses, BBQ’s,x2, dives, photo’s. Just your typical Dive HQ adventure!
I sat there on the top bunk of the Education Houses bedroom and relived my days events mentallywith my eyes closed and the next time I opened them we were gearing up for the trip back to Days Bay on the ferry…
All I could think of was.. when is the next trip?
Thanks to all,most of all thanks to Claire and the crew at Dive HQ Petone for organising such a great weekend away.
Big dive done locally..
Regards Rob Wilson
(Pictures by Frontline Photography www.frontlinephotography.co.nz and “Winch” photo by Stuart Brown)