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.