Muttonbirds - part of a story
Bruce Connew with Dean Tiemi Te Au
Photographs and introduction by Bruce Connew / Oral history text with Dean Tiemi Te Au / Design and typography / Catherine Griffiths / Published by / Vapour Momenta Books / March 2004 / ISBN 9582430 4 2 /.......................................
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ed.600
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Softcover, wiro-bound, french
folded / 134 pages / 30 duotone images / 145 x 180mm / English / Printed
by Printlink, NZ / Signed numbered, limited edition of 600 / OUT-OF-PRINT
Muttonbirds - part of a story is a 30-image series exhibited first at McNamara Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand, in 2004, then at Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, and the Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand. The exhibition was accompanied by the artist book, which is now out of print.
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“I met Dean Tiemi Te Au in Wellington through a friend. When
I mentioned to this friend my long-held wish to photograph muttonbirding,
she said matter-of-factly, ‘I know a muttonbirder.’ We were on the street
during this conversation and I’m sure I displayed my surprise. I had been
trying to meet a muttonbirder for several years and had all but given up.
She arranged a meeting in a cafe. Dean brought along his young daughter,
Kahutatara, who remained a picture of patience for two hours while he took
me through his crumpled Maori Land Court succession order, line by line,
and talked at length about Taukihepa, a muttonbird island just off the south-west
coast of Stewart Island, and a birding area there he called Heretatua. We
talked too about the muttonbirds’ long haul from near the Arctic Circle to
burrows in the dark, peat soils of the muttonbird islands. Females lay one
egg in the same burrow every year, he told me, which I thought astonishing,
given the distance of their journey. He also said they were hopeless at landing,
crashing through the canopy and thumping to the ground. He stood up and held
his arms out like wings and gently shook his narrow frame to show me how
the birds recovered for several minutes before waddling off to their burrows.
He said over twenty million of them arrived in New Zealand each year. Much
of this was very new to me. He explained that his entry to mutton-birding
had not been straightforward, but that’s his story to tell. For six days
in November two years back, Dean and I, along with a couple of friends to
help cover launch costs, motored around some of the muttonbird islands and
up to Preservation Inlet in search of the vast flocks of muttonbirds fishing
at sea that Dean had described. Along with numerous smaller groups, we came
across two flocks numbering tens, if not hundreds of thousands of muttonbirds.
Each time, the spectacle was out of this world.
The following year Dean invited me to Taukihepa to photograph him and two
of his sons, Dean and younger brother Tiemi, muttonbirding on Heretatua.
They had been on the island two weeks when I arrived with Catherine, my wife.
Our stay was brief. It turned out, according to The Titi (Muttonbird) Regulations
1978, that we should not have been there and Dean was prosecuted by the Department
of Conservation and recently fined $100. According to the same regulations,
which are administered by the Department of Conservation, to go muttonbirding
on beneficial islands you must be a descendant of the original owners of
Stewart Island. To prove that you are a descendant, the regulations say,
you must present your whakapapa to the Maori Land Court. It turns out that
not everyone has. What follows is part of an elaborate and sometimes unfortunate
story.”
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