Little Southern Land

Little Southern Land
Originally uploaded by blackgrape.

I'm reading a great book at the moment entitled "The History of New Zealand". Which is appropriate, given my current location.

There's a story about the seal traders. New Zealand was colonized by the Europeans thanks largely to the whale and seal trade. The English traded the fur they got from the seals in exchange for tea from China. The tea was then shipped to Britain.

The sealers and whalers were often dumped on bleak unpopulated coastlines for months at a time. They were left to fend for themselves without much food, shelter, supplies, mobile phones or broadband connections.

They were then picked up six or twelve months later, having managed to kill off most of the seal population in order that the aristocracy in China could keep their ears warm.

However, some sealing gangs were left far longer, presumably because the captain who was supposed to pick them up had found some glorious sunny beach further north and thought "sod it lads, we're stopping here!".

In one instance, the sealers got fed up with waiting. They'd grown tired of eating seal burgers, seal steaks, seal dumplings and seal "surprise"€, so decided to take transportation matters in their own hands. They built a boat and sailed to Australia, which is a not inconsiderable distance, being roughly the same distance from London to Moscow, and has a lot warmer weather. And far fewer seals. Brave, brave people.

Stranded in paradise. It's still largely unpopulated. A ruggedly beautiful place to be stranded, though, and and my photos just do not do the landscape justice.