Moturata
| Moturata | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Waters | Pacific Ocean | |
| Geographical location | 46 ° 3 '29 " S , 170 ° 13' 1" E | |
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| length | 500 m | |
| width | 100 m | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
Moturata , also Taieri Island , is a small, about 500 m long and 100 m wide island directly in front of the mouth of the Taieri River near Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand .
At low tide it is connected to the mainland by a sandbank. The island is a nature reserve and home to numerous protected sea birds such as yellow-eyed penguins . It was a whaling station in the 1830s and 1840s .
Taieri Island could be the Isle of Wight, where the Sydney seal hunter Brothers, chartered by Robert Campbell and run by Robert Mason, released 8 of 11 convicts in November 1809. Among them was William Tucker. Alternatively, the “Isle of Wight” could have been Green Island , 15 kilometers southeast . Some of the abandoned claimed to have spent the period from November 9, 1809 to December 20, 1810 on the island.
In 1839 the Weller brothers from the Otago whaling station in Otago Harbor set up an outpost on Taieri Island, which they operated for 3 years. Edward Shortland records that 70 tuns of whale oil (1 tun equals 954 liters) were obtained in 1839 , 15 tuns in 1840 and 8 tuns in 1841. The station was headed by a Mr. Cureton. On the evening of June 9, 1839, the Captain Wells parcel bot, coming from Otago, ran aground when it tried to take up oil on the island. She lost the second mate, the steward, and a mentally ill man named 'Dole' or 'Cole' who had been sent to Sydney from Otago.
In 1844, John Jones from Waikouaiti briefly revived whaling. Tommy Chaseland, an Aboriginal mongrel, and his wife Puna, sister of Te Matenga Taiaroa, ruled the teams. The visitor Frederick Tuckett remarked: " Nowhere, perhaps, do twenty Englishmen reside on a spot so comfortless as this naked inaccessible isle " (" Perhaps nowhere do 20 Englishmen live in such an uncomfortable place as this bare and inaccessible island. ")