A Doubtful Sound

This is one of those jokes that just goes on and on, and wasn't even funny in the first place. It's a sort of a hmmm...? noise.

Doubtful Sound was so named because Captain Cook, when he first circumnavigated New Zealand and charted the various nooks and crannies, was doubtful that there would be enough wind to sail his ship back out of the sound should he enter. So he didn't bother. It was left to a more enterprising Italian captain of a Spanish ship to send a longboat inland.

The Sound, as we were told numerously, was not a Sound at all, but a Fiord. The difference, for anyone who has never studied geography, is that a Sound is a valley carved by a river, then flooded by the sea. A Fiord is a valley carved by glaciers, then flooded by the sea. Since this distinction was dreamt up many years after Captain Cook had left the Admiralty and gone into package holidays to Ibiza, it's hardly fair to blame him and his fellow explorers for mis-naming the fourteen inlets that make up the west coast of Fiordland (or Soundland if you're being cheaky).

To get to Doubtful Sound we first had to take a boat across Lake Manapouri. Then we were put on a bus and driven over Wilson's pass to Deep Harbour. Finally we boarded a second boat and were given the three hour trip round the coastline. It is a thoroughly magical place, impossibly steep-sided cliffs plummeting into the sea from thousands of feet above. The rainfall in Doubtful Sound is around five and half metres a year, and all this water cascading into the sea means that around the coast the salt water lies under a layer of fresh, varying in thickness from a few centimetres to eight metres. This fresh water is coloured with tannins leached from the dense vegetation which clings to the cliffs, giving the sea a natural sun-block. Divers and marine biologists get very excited about this, because it means that corals and things normally only found at much deeper levels are within a scuba's reach in the Sounds.

I was more impressed with the way the trees came right down to the water, unaffected by salt spray. Also by the great bare swathes of rock where tree avalanches had cleared scars in the vegetation. There is no soil on the rock in Fiordland. Instead, in the high moisture, mosses and lichens colonise the natural faults and cracks in the granite, spreading out and providing a base for shrubs, and ultimately trees to grow in. The trees interlock their roots, gaining whatever purchase they, too, can get from the cracks. Eventually the trees at the top get too big - perhaps after a heavy rain or snowfall, or one of the thousand earthquakes the area receives every month (again something they told us only after we'd paid up) - and fall over. Only instead of just making a small hole in the forest canopy, they cause a catastrophic avalanche, pulling down hundreds or thousands of trees at once. A couple of years ago an earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Richter scale brought down so many trees the Sound was clogged with them for months.

Right on the edge of Doubtful Sound, where it becomes difficult to decide what is uncertain and what is South Tasman Sea, the worst effects of the open ocean are held back by the Shelter Islands. Beyond these are the Nee Islands, and since it wasn't actually blowing a gale, our Captain decided to take us out in search of Crested Penguins and New Zealand Fur Seals (not actually a seal at all, it's ears being external thus making it a sealion). The penguins were reticent, but we managed a few seals before the sound of desperate retching and the spatter of pre-digested lunch on spray-washed deck convinced our tour guide to head back for harbour.

On the way back to Lake Manapouri we were given a final bonus tour of the hydro-electric power station. This wondrous feat of engineering is in a vast cavern, carved from the very living rock, four hundred feet underground at the end of the lake. Seven great pipes bring water down to seven huge turbines. A ten mile long tunnel then takes the water out to Doubtful Sound and the sea.

When first this plan was mooted, the design involved raising the level of Lake Manapouri by some one hundred feet, joining it with Lake Te Anau (of the Glow-worm fame) and forming the largest lake in the Southern Hemisphere. Not unsurprisingly, the locals were agin' this plan. More surprisingly for the times (this was 1963), their campaign to have the plan changed was successful. In a triumph of hope over committee, the lake levels are now closely monitored and controlled, keeping them well within natural variation whilst still generating some staggering amount of effectively pollution free energy. Sadly the vast bulk of this is used to smelt Bauxite into Aluminium, but nobody's perfect.

Next: The Welshman's Revenge

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