Ten Years in Pōneke: Part Five — Somes Speedrunning

Or, hey I was sup­posed to fin­ish all of these arti­cles in 2025 but then life hap­pened so I guess we’re doing lit­tle quests in 2026 as well.

[Warn­ing: This piece talks about dis­ease, war and death.]

Matiu / Somes Island is the ever-present spec­tre loom­ing in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, one of three islands that the har­bour cra­dles gen­tly with­in its grasp, and I’ve been mean­ing to go out there lit­er­al­ly ever since I first arrived in the city.

Eleven years lat­er, I final­ly stopped putting it off.

In 2025 (and 2026, it seems), I’m doing ten things to cel­e­brate liv­ing in Pōneke for ten years. There’ll be sto­ries. Pics. Non­sense. Check out the series here.

Matiu has a sto­ried his­to­ry.

Used as a refuge by pre-Colo­nial Māori, then act­ing as a quar­an­tine sta­tion for trav­el­ers com­ing into Welling­ton, as well as an intern­ment camp in both World Wars, the his­to­ry (both its high­lights and its dark­ness) is pal­pa­ble the moment you step foot onto the island.

I’d be here all day if I wrote about its many sto­ries, but I do rec­om­mend check­ing out David McGill’s Island of Secrets, and Pad­dy Richard­son’s By the Green of the Spring for more.

The trip to the island isn’t so com­pli­cat­ed. Get on the East-by-West fer­ry down by Mas­ter Kong on the Welling­ton water­front, drift along on the gen­tle (or white-capped) waves for 50 min­utes as the boat goes to Days Bay to pick up more pas­sen­gers, and then dis­em­bark onto the island after doing a quick quar­an­tine check (as a reserve, DOC does­n’t want for­eign ants, seeds or sim­i­lar on the island, for obvi­ous rea­sons).

Then, the island is yours to explore. Depend­ing on fer­ry sched­ules, you get 1.5–3 hours to wan­der about at your leisure.

As I’m me and I fun­da­men­tal­ly can’t be chill, I used that 1.5 hours to speedrun the entire island, pick up 14 geo­caches* and absorb as much infor­ma­tion as I could.

The night before, I planned out my route, ensur­ing I would dou­ble back as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. The island isn’t that big, but it is a bit up and down, and I want­ed to ensure I had enough time at each spot before I moved onto the next. Route came out to just under 3km, I land­ed on the island at 10.30 with a dead­line of 12.15, and we were off.

First it was off to the east­ern­most point on the trip, the site of the island’s for­mer degauss­ing sta­tion.

In the Sec­ond World War, Ger­man forces laid mag­net­ic mines across the entrances of sev­er­al har­bours in Aotearoa — even man­ag­ing to sink the infa­mous ship, the RMS Nia­gara — in Auck­land Har­bour. As a fun fact, most of the mines in Welling­ton Har­bour haven’t been found. When a ship was degaussed, it became ‘invis­i­ble’ to the mag­net­ic mines, and allowed safe pas­sage into the har­bour. This process was con­duct­ed on Matiu / Somes, by the Wrens.

These days, there’s not much left at the site of the degauss­ing sta­tion, but it’s still a fas­ci­nat­ing place to stop off — I def­i­nite­ly did­n’t know about Pōneke’s mine-based his­to­ry, and I will be think­ing about the ammo dumps in Welling­ton Har­bour next time I get on a fer­ry.

Two dig­i­tal caches safe­ly fig­ured out, I head­ed back towards the docks and up to the north­ern­most point of the island, col­lect­ing glo­ri­ous views across to Ngau­ran­ga and Petone, before turn­ing south again.

My next stop found me at the memo­r­i­al cairn.

From 1872, when the immi­grant ship ‘Eng­land’ arrived with sev­er­al cas­es of small­pox on board, Matiu / Somes act­ed as a quar­an­tine sta­tion for those com­ing into Welling­ton, both humans and ani­mals; though the island was­n’t used for human quar­an­tine after World War One.

The memo­r­i­al cairn was placed in the 1970s to remem­ber those buried on the island.

In some places the his­to­ry is pal­pa­ble, and on Matiu / Somes it is espe­cial­ly so. Wood­en build­ings marked with names of ani­mals, cracked con­crete splin­tered through with weeds, and a memo­r­i­al where the youngest name on it was bare­ly a day old.

Some places are rife with ghosts.

The sad­ness in some parts of the island is all-encom­pass­ing. Though quar­an­tine was more than nec­es­sary, the short­com­ings — and by exten­sion cru­el­ty — of his­tor­i­cal med­i­cine feels stag­ger­ing.

Small­pox was, and is a hor­ri­fy­ing dis­ease.**

I sprin­kled my hands and head in water and moved south, fol­low­ing the wind­ing trail, which spat me out at a look­out, before I fol­lowed the trail east to the island’s light­house, col­lect­ing both phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal geo­caches along the way.

I’m a big fan of light­hous­es; my life’s goal is uniron­i­cal­ly to become a light­house keep­er, but there’s not a huge amount of them that are acces­si­ble to get to in Pōneke. The ones out at Pen­car­row are acces­si­ble, they’re just inter­minably dull to trav­el to, unless you’re a big fan of grav­el roads.

This light­house is still active, actu­al­ly. Oper­at­ed by a keep­er from 1866 to 1924, it’s now auto­mat­ed and helps guide ships into Welling­ton Har­bour.

A tramway (pic­tured below) helped bring goods from the beach up to the light­house, and is inac­ces­si­ble these days — to my dis­ap­point­ment, I adore her­itage rail.

Hav­ing been pressed against the light­house for arguably too many min­utes as oth­er peo­ple took pho­tos, I scam­pered away up the hill and up the steep­est part of the island to the sum­mit and large anti-air­craft bat­tery on top of it.

These gun emplace­ments and the near­by com­mand post were built dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, but much like Wrights Hill Fortress across the har­bour, these guns were nev­er fired against an ene­my.

As I strug­gled to reach a geo­cache at the trig on the sum­mit — much to my cha­grin, I con­tin­ue to only be five foot sev­en — I shot some pic­tures for anoth­er trav­el­er of them in front of the glo­ri­ous view and then slid down the hill on my butt on the long dry grass towards the col­lec­tion of build­ings cling­ing to the hill­top.

These days, Matiu / Somes is a con­ser­va­tion area, hav­ing become a reserve for native plants, birds, rep­tiles and inver­te­brates includ­ing tuatara, kakari­ki, North Island robin, lit­tle blue pen­guins and wētā.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, these build­ings act­ed as quar­an­tine zones and intern­ment camps. It was sur­re­al to reach the bot­tom of the hilly slope and come out amongst build­ings that had seen so much in the past; to wan­der through the bumpy ter­rain and stare off at the for­mer intern­ment bar­racks*** and ani­mal quar­an­tine barns, ancient weath­er­board build­ings peel­ing at the seams.

Eerie. Con­fronting. An odd place to linger.

Find­ing more geo­caches, I slipped off down towards the wharf again, to eat a muf­fin and sit in the sun until the Ika Rere showed up to fer­ry us all back to the city, me at least for­ev­er changed.

Matiu / Somes is a deeply strange place. Tran­quil in moments, but hard to escape. My thoughts fre­quent the island now I’ve learned of some of its secrets. Maybe yours will too.

*If you’re a geo­cacher, you might note there’s not 14+ geo­caches on Matiu / Somes — and to that I say — check your AdLabs, there’s anoth­er ten in there.

**Matiu / Somes was­n’t just a quar­an­tine zone for small­pox, but for a lot of dis­eases. One of the most trag­ic cas­es is of Kim Lee, who was exiled to “Lep­er Island” (Mokop­una Island, off Matiu / Somes’ north tip), due fears of lep­rosy (and like­ly racial bias.)

I have an inter­est in epi­demi­ol­o­gy, and one of the best books I’ve ever read about small­pox is Richard Pre­ston’s The Demon in the Freez­er, detail­ing small­pox and anthrax as bio­log­i­cal agents. I’d rec­om­mend read­ing it, but it is har­row­ing. Also, the phras­ing ‘is’ was used as although small­pox is tech­ni­cal­ly erad­i­cat­ed, it still exists in some forms with­in labs in the world.

***Matiu / Somes Island’s intern­ment his­to­ry is cov­ered in Pad­dy Richard­son’s nov­el By The Green of the Spring.