The weather was perfect when we came to the mouth of Tamatea, Dusky Sound, and I was given an extra duty, to escort passengers to Pickersgill Harbour, and describe what happened on March 27, 1773, when Captain Cook steered his ship the Resolution into the Sound and found anchorage after a long and arduous exploration of the subantarctic. Short of water and supplies, he needed to rest and refit. It was a most convenient location, with a ready supply of fresh water, and access to the shore by means of a plank.
George Forster wrote in his diary: "We began to clear away the woods from a neighbouring hill, in order to fix the astronomer’s observatory upon it".
I disembarked before the passengers and was soon zooming across the calm waters in an inflatable zodiac. After climbing up the slippery slope, I found myself literally following in Captain Cook’s footsteps. A quick reconnoitre prepared me for the first party of passengers, and I guided them to the surviving tree stumps where the clearance had been made for an observatory that was set up to establish the precise longitude and latitude.
It was here too that Cook organised brewing beer from manuka and boiled rimu, in order to ward off the scourge of scurvy.
My hands were itching, as we wandered over this historic encampment, to dig down and find the foundations of the smithy and brewery that must be underground.
The cruise continued to Ulva Island and then on a wonderful calm morning, just as the sun was rising, we sailed up Otago Harbour, an anchorage missed by Cook, a visit that involved a lecture on my fieldwork in the Otago goldfields. After Akaroa and the Kaikoura whales, we made what, in retrospect, was a courageous and intrepid visit to Te Puia o Whakaari White Island, another place named by Captain Cook.
Walking up to the crater rim of an active volcano is not the wisest of moves but my visit did encounter some industrial archaeology, the rusting remains of a sulphur extraction factory that was in full swing during the Great Depression.
