Stuff played up a story recently about an American TV reality show contestant in a survival race contest in New Zealand eating a weka.
I ate weka many times back in the 1980s in the Chatham Islands.
This occurred after Peter Tapsell and I took my jet over to the Chathams on a fishing trip, the first of many such trips in the 1980s. Back then Peter was the minister in charge of the Chathams.
It was the first jet ever to land there and ruined our initial fishing trip as I’d told the pilots to take the Chatham kids on joyrides. So all day as we hauled groper up, from a fishing boat anchored a mere 50 metres off shore, the jet screamed back and forward across us, driving us mad.
Back then a very amusing fellow had built a motel near the airport, this on the opposite side of the island’s small township of Waitangi.
He was way ahead of his time as no tourists went there back then. His cuisine entrée each night was sweet and sour weka, the bird being rife thus not protected there.
Our arrival was a huge relief to his only other guest, historian Michael King, ensconced there writing the first history of the Chathams and going mad with loneliness. Michael and I became good friends thereafter.
We blooded my latest jet about four years back by making my first visit to the Chathams since the 1980s. Co-incidentally, among my passengers was Sir Hugh Rennie who’d just authored a book on the Chathams history.
Now the island was much busier but, fishing wise, painted a very different picture. We hired a fishing boat to take us fishing and caught nothing, this a far cry from the 1980s memories.
This article was originally published by No Punches Pulled.
