Campbell Island, New Zealand

Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku as viewed from the International Space Station

Campbell Island was discovered in 1810 by Captain Frederick Hasselborough of the sealing brig Perseverance, which was owned by shipowner Robert Campbell's Sydney-based company Campbell & Co. (whence the island's name).[1] Captain Hasselborough drowned on 4 November 1810 in Perseverance Harbour on the south of the island, along with a young woman and a boy.

The island became a seal hunting base, and the seal population was almost totally eradicated. The first sealing boom was over by the mid-1810s. The second was a brief revival in the 1820s. The sealing era lasted from 1810 till 1912 during which time 49 vessels are recorded visiting for sealing purposes, one of which was lost off the coast.[2]

The whaling boom extended here in the 1830s and '40s. In 1874, the island was visited by a French scientific expedition intending to view the transit of Venus. Much of the island's topography is named after aspects of, or people connected with, the expedition.

Chart of South Harbour, Campbell Island, 1840, by J.E. Davis, master[3]

In December 1840 Campbell Island was the last landfall before the Ross expedition explored the Antarctic.[3]

In 1883 the American schooner Sarah W. Hunt, a whaler, was near Campbell Island. Twelve men in two small whaleboats headed for the island in terrible weather looking for seals. One of the boats disappeared, and the other boat with six men aboard managed to make it ashore. Sanford Miner, the captain of the Sarah W. Hunt, assumed all the whalers were lost, and sailed away to Lyttelton, New Zealand. Fortunately for the stranded whalers, a seal protection boat, the Kekeno, happened to arrive at the island, and rescued the castaways. The captain's behaviour caused an international scandal.[4]

In the late 19th century, the island became a pastoral lease. Sheep farming was undertaken from 1896 until the lease, along with the sheep and a small herd of cattle, was abandoned in 1931 because of the Great Depression.[5]

In 1907, a group of scientists spent eight days on the island group surveying. The 1907 Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition conducted a magnetic survey and also took botanical, zoological and geological specimens.

During World War II, a coastwatching station was operative at Tucker Cove at the north shore of Perseverance Harbour as part of the Cape Expedition program.

Following the passage of the Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, the name of the island was officially altered to Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku.[6]

An amateur radio DXpedition organised by the Hellenic Amateur Radio Association of Australia visited Campbell Island during November–December 2012. The team consisted of ten amateur radio operators from around the world, a NZ Department of Conservation Officer and the ship's crew of six including the captain on the sailing vessel "Evohe". The ZL9HR DXpedition team made 42,922 on-air contacts during an eight-day operating period.[7]

Meteorological station at Beeman Cove (unmanned/automatic since 1995)

Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku is one of New Zealand's Subantarctic Islands

After World War II, the coast watching station at Tucker Cove were converted for use as a meteorological station until the summer of 1958, when a new base was established at Beeman Cove, a few hundred metres further east. The new location provided improved exposure for the weather instruments, particularly wind recordings, and more modern accommodation for up to 12 full-time staff.

The new meteorological station (WMO ID 93944) at Beeman Cove was operated by the New Zealand Meteorological Service with ten full-time staff. Each team undertook 12-month expeditions to the island to undertake three hourly weather reports and twice daily radiosonde flights using hydrogen filled balloons. Weather reports were radioed back to New Zealand using HF radio to ZLW Wellington Radio. In addition to its primary purpose as a meteorological station, staff at the station also operated a seismic monitoring station, made measurements of the earth's magnetic field, the ionosphere, and aurora australis, and undertook Albatross banding and whale counts of primarily Southern Right Whales for the New Zealand Wildlife Service.

In April 1992, staff of the weather station were snorkelling at Northwest Bay when one of them, Mike Fraser, was attacked by a great white shark some 30 metres (100 ft) offshore from the beach at Middle Bay. Fraser managed to return to shore with the assistance of one of his team, Jacinda Amey, after suffering severe lacerations to both his arms. The team kept Fraser alive at the bay—some four kilometres (2.5 mi) from the main base—while a rescue helicopter from Taupō was called and made an emergency flight to the island to repatriate him to Invercargill Hospital. This was the longest ever single-engine helicopter rescue in the world.[8] Jacinda Amey was awarded the New Zealand Cross—the highest bravery medal for civilians—for assisting the injured team member from the water.[9] The rescue helicopter pilot, John Funnell, was awarded the New Zealand Bravery Medal.[10]

In 1995, station staff were permanently withdrawn when the manual weather observation programme was replaced by an automated weather station, and the upper air soundings ceased. Today periodic visits to the island are undertaken by Meteorological Service staff to maintain the weather station on Royal New Zealand Navy vessels, which also transport conservation staff undertaking field research. Other visitors to the island include occasional summer time eco-tourism cruises.

In May 2018, scientists in New Zealand documented what they believe is the largest wave ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere to date. The 23.8-metre (78 ft) wave was measured by a weather buoy near the island.[11]

The Lady of the Heather is the title of a 1945 romantic novel by Will Lawson. The novel is a mixture of facts and fiction elaborating on the incidents surrounding Captain Hasselburg's death on Campbell Island. The story is about a daughter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, exiled to Campbell Island after she is suspected of treachery to the Jacobite cause.[12] Her character was inspired by Elizabeth Farr.[13] Farr was probably what would now be called a "ship girl", but the presence of a European woman at this remote place, and her death, gave rise to The Lady of the Heather story.[14]

The accident happened when William Tucker was present on the Aurora. Tucker was another unusual character in the sealing era who became the source of a legend and a novel.[15] The remoteness and striking appearance of the sealing grounds, whether on mainland New Zealand or the subantarctic islands, and the sealing era's early place in Australasia's European history, supply the elements for romance and legend which are generally absent in the area's colonial history.

Campbell Island has a maritime tundra climate (Köppen ET). The island receives only 647 hours of bright sunshine annually and it can expect less than an hour's sunshine on 215 days (59%) of the year. The peaks of the island are frequently obscured by clouds. It has an annual rainfall of 1,329 millimetres (52.3 in), with rain, mainly light showers or drizzle (although it often snows in the winter and spring), falling on an average of 325 days a year. It is a windy place, with gusts of over 96 kilometres per hour (50 kn; 60 mph) occurring on at least 100 days each year. Variations in daily and annual temperatures are small with a mean annual temperature of 7 °C (44.6 °F), rarely rising above 12.1 °C (53.8 °F). The warmest temperature ever recorded was 21.2 °C (70.2 °F) and the coldest was −7.9 °C (17.8 °F). [16]

Campbell Island is an extinct alkaline shield volcano that marine erosion has worn down into its present shape.[33][34] The volcano has been extinct for some six million years and glacial ice cover prevented vegetation from growing on the island until approximately 15,000 years ago.[35] Basalt, hawaiite, mugearite and trachyte are the dominant volcanic rocks comprising Campbell Island. They were erupted between 6.5 and 11 million years ago during the Miocene epoch.[34] The island is considered to be part of the submerged continent of Zealandia.

During World War II, the New Zealand government had coastal watchers on the island with trained naturalists who made observations of the geology, flora, and fauna of Campbell Island.[36]

To mark the 200th anniversary of its discovery, the Campbell Island Bicentennial Expedition (CIBE) was undertaken from December 2010 to February 2011. The research expedition was the largest multidisciplinary expedition to the island in over 20 years, and aimed to document the island's human history, assess recovery of the island's flora and invertebrate fauna since the removal of sheep and the world's largest rat eradication programme, study the island's plentiful but little understood streams and characterise the unusual stream fauna, and reconstruct past environmental conditions and deduce long term climate change from tarn sediment cores.

The expedition was run by the 50 Degrees South Trust, a charitable organisation established to further research and education on New Zealand's Subantarctic Islands, and to support the preservation and management of these World Heritage ecosystems. The expedition and the programme outputs can be followed at the CIBE website.

• 
  Vagrant adolescent male elephant seal Mirounga leonina resting in the tussock grasses
• 
  New Zealand sea lions disporting themselves among the tussock grass
• 
  Campbell Island landscape (taken during an unusually warm and dry late summer)
• 
  Campbell Island landscape with a megaherb community in the foreground
• 
  Southern royal albatross in flight
• 
  Pair of southern royal albatrosses
• 
  Southern royal albatross, Diomedea epomophora with chick on mound nest on Campbell Island
• 
  Sea lions playing at Northwest Bay

• Megaherbs
• Campbell teal
• Campbell Island group
• New Zealand subantarctic islands
• List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
• List of islands
• Desert island
• Rat Island, where rats have also been eradicated

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Campbell Island.

• Topographic map, Campbell Island, NZMS 272/3, Edition 1, 1986.
• Long description of Campbell Island and especially its history
• Landcare Research - Campbell Island
• Campbell Island Bicentennial Expedition
• Campbell Island Freshwater Invertebrate Identification Keys

52°32.4′S 169°8.7′E