Qualla: Kawau Island

Kawau Island: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Five species of wallaby hop through the bush of Kawau Island because a nineteenth-century governor thought they would look nice there. Sir George Grey, who governed New Zealand twice and collected exotic animals the way other men collected stamps, introduced wallabies, kookaburras, and various other species to his private island retreat in the Hauraki Gulf. More than a century later, four wallaby species still roam the island -- brush-tailed rock-wallabies, tammar wallabies, parma wallabies, and swamp wallabies -- methodically destroying the native vegetation that the island's kiwi, weka, and kaka depend on. The Pohutukawa Trust has spent three decades trying to undo what Grey did in a few years of enthusiastic importing.

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Image: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Kawau Island: An Island Named for a Bird

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Kawau takes its name from the Maori word for the shag, a cormorant common to New Zealand's coastal waters. The island sits in the Hauraki Gulf, 1.4 kilometers off the Northland Peninsula at its closest point and about 40 kilometers north of Auckland. Almost every property relies ...

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Image: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Kawau Island: Cornish Miners and Welsh Smelters

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Public domain. Before Grey turned Kawau into his personal estate, the island had a different kind of value. Copper was discovered, and miners from Falmouth in Cornwall were brought to New Zealand to work the deposits. When it turned out that unsmelted ore was a fire hazard aboard ships, smelter...

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Image: United Kingdom Hydrographic Office | Public domain

Kawau Island: The Governor's Menagerie

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naga Seramsetty, CC BY 3.0. Grey's legacy on Kawau is complicated. He was a significant figure in New Zealand's colonial history, but his habit of importing exotic animals to his island retreat created an ecological disaster that has outlasted him by more than a century. The wallabies he introduced -- five ...

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Image: Naga Seramsetty | CC BY 3.0

Kawau Island: Undoing a Century of Damage

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Louis Mundy (1826–1881), Public domain. The Pohutukawa Trust, founded in 1992 and chaired by Ray Weaver until his death in 2015, has been methodically reversing Grey's legacy. The strategy is staged eradication: wallabies and possums first, then stoats, then feral cats and ship rats. Progress has been real. Possum numb...

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Image: Daniel Louis Mundy (1826–1881) | Public domain

Kawau Island: The Pohutukawa's Second Chance

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Louis Mundy (1826–1881), Public domain. The coastal pohutukawa tree, one of New Zealand's most iconic species with its crimson summer flowers, was being stripped bare by possums and wallabies when the Trust began its work. With sustained pest control since 1985, the trees have recovered. Rare indigenous plant species h...

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Image: Daniel Louis Mundy (1826–1881) | Public domain