SOUTHERN GREAT LAND
INCONGRUOUS.
We’re atop Magog, one of the great granite domes of southernmost Stewart Island, lying in the sun. Robbie Burton and Darryn Pegram snooze in the strange scoops on the summit, seemingly shaped to perfectly accommodate horizontal humans.
Eastwards stretches the tidal tentacle of Cook Arm, while a stone’s throw away is the giant granite egg of Gog. And below? It’s like a spaceship from Star Wars has crashed through the scrub and come to rest almost intact, but with bits of debris strewn along its landing path. Its name: Hielanman.
We’re in the wilderness of the Pegasus Remote Area, and it’s fantastical. Nowhere else in Aotearoa even remotely resembles this landscape. Although barely topping 400m, the granite domes rise from vegetation so stunted by latitude and weather that they adopt the grandeur of considerably higher peaks.
Lazing in the warm December sun seems incongruous because so many factors needed to fall into place for us to be here. The weather, transport logistics, the fickle nature of electronic communication. Not to mention leaving my camera at Wellington airport. That had been a bad start, but I was saved by an angelic Air New Zealand manager at Invercargill Airport who bent all the rules to get it delivered to me at Oban, Rakiura’s only town.
The whole venture had been the brainchild of Rob Brown and Craig Pot-ton, who had decided to book the South Pegasus Hunters Hut for a week. As New Zealand’s southernmost public hut, this was a
