Thanks to an eagle-eyed, early morning lookout, disaster was averted. Cook was a rediscoverer. He never landed in this neck of the woods, where the descendants of equally competent navigators had lived for a millennium. First Inhabitants When the first Polynesians arrived, around 1000AD, the giant flightless moa, roamed the mainland, with drumsticks the size of a small haunch of beef. Maori population was never high in southern New Zealand, probably only 2,000 in 1800.
Climate is too cool to grow kumara the staple sweet potato, brought from Polynesia.
People were nomadic, living in small extended family groups and moving seasonally depending on food resources. Stewart Island was visited in April and May to gather titi the fledging chicks of the sooty shearwater. These pelagic sea birds migrate from the north Pacific in October, to breed in millions on Islets round Stewart Island. Unlike most parts of the world, descendants of the original Maori still gather chicks as food, taking some 300,000 per year, and seemingly having no effect on total populations. At 47 South the southern lights are seen quite often.