Cast Adrift New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands

In the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean...

..lies a land cut off from the rest of the world...

..since the time of the dinosaurs.

After 80 million years of isolation,

nature has gone its own way.

In this lost world, life plays by different rules.

Penguins in the forests...

..parrots in the snow...

..and predators from prehistory.

Their lives are dominated by the most powerful forces on Earth.

When humans finally arrived, they discovered

nowhere is more strange and mysterious than New Zealand.

There are more species of penguin in New Zealand

than anywhere else in the world.

They first evolved here around 60 million years ago.

And here, in their ancestral home,

the penguins do things a little differently.

This Snares penguin has been out with hundreds of others

catching fish for her chick.

Like all parents here, her commute home to feed him is unusual.

She follows a path worn by thousands of tiny feet.

Next, a sheer rock face.

When you have no arms and a swimmer's body,

it's a bit like scaling a slope in a sack.

One obstacle conquered, now it's on to the next.

An expedition into the woods.

Hidden deep amongst the gnarled trunks and ferns,

they've established a large woodland colony.

Mum may have scaled cliffs and battled through forest

but she's not home yet.

She's just one of the 60,000 residents who make this journey.

Over centuries, they have worn down a maze of tiny streets

and miles of crisscrossed pathways.

She has to remember every twist and turn...

..while jostling past all the other busy commuters.

Finally, she reaches her destination,

half a mile or so inland.

One of many forest clearings where penguins have their young.

Her partner and her baby are waiting for her,

if she can find them.

Other adults are very protective of their territory.

So returning penguins hold themselves in a peculiar posture

designed to intimidate.

Home at last.

And Mum finally delivers a meal of pre-digested krill.

This woodland lifestyle is only possible for a sea bird

due to one remarkable fact.

New Zealand doesn't have any large predators -

in fact it never had any large land mammals at all.

The reason lies back in the time of the dinosaurs,

when New Zealand was one small part of a single gigantic continent.

Around 80 million years ago, huge geological forces broke up the land.

One fragment was forced far out into the ocean.

New Zealand -

cut-off and impossible for any land animal to reach since.

The same geological forces that caused its isolation

are still alive today.

In this part of the North Island, the ground water boils.

The Pohutu geyser, New Zealand's mightiest...

..erupting up to 20 times a day,

shooting super-heated water 30 metres into the air.

The geysers form part of a dramatic geothermal landscape.

With boiling cauldrons

and corrosive lakes with scalding water.

It's so acidic that it dissolves the rock itself...

..into a mineral slurry.

Hundreds of steaming vents breathe eerie life

into this deadly landscape.

At its heart, Frying Pan Lake, one of the world's largest hot springs.

The water here is hot enough to slowly cook your flesh.

As it flows downhill, it cools and deposits colourful minerals.

Over thousands of years,

these build up into glistening crystalline terraces.

Further downstream, the water cools to around 40 degrees,

the temperature of a steaming hot bath.

It's too hot for fish,

so the stream beds are largely predator-free.

A haven for heat-tolerant insects.

Wisps of geothermal midges.

They only fly a day or two so they urgently dance in search of a mate.

But their performance attracts unwelcome attention.

A mob of fantails, one of New Zealand's smallest

and most agile birds.

It's easy to see how they got their name.

This father has a ravenous family to support.

His hunting technique is called hawking.

He leaps from stream-side perches to snatch the midges in midair.

A fantail's flight isn't just fast, it's unpredictable, too.

Slowed down 20 times, the secrets of this aerobatic ace are revealed.

Short, round wings give him the power and manoeuvrability...

..of a stunt plane.

But it's his enormous tail that gives him the edge.

Fanning it out turns it into a giant airbrake,

creating the equivalent of a handbrake turn.

The midges are tiny, so to feed his growing chicks,

this dutiful dad undertakes more than 300 sorties an hour.

These fantails have turned this uninhabitable landscape

into an opportunity.

In New Zealand, hostile environments are part of everyday life.

The entire country sits astride a massive tectonic plate boundary,

where two shifting fragments of the earth's crust meet.

Just off the coast of Kaikoura,

this boundary takes the form of an underwater canyon,

a trench that brings the deep sea near to the shore.

The depths of the ocean are full of nutrients and here,

close to the coast, winds and currents force them to the surface,

creating a rich feeding ground.

Bull sperm whales come to bulk up on deep-sea squid.

And there's plenty of prey for their smaller, more agile cousins.

Dusky dolphins live here in their thousands.

All dolphins communicate with each other using a complex range

of underwater sounds and clicks,

but Dusky dolphins can speak in another way, too.

As a species, they are some of the most

acrobatic dolphins in the world, and researchers have discovered

that leaping is part of their communication.

Some jumps and splashes may have their own particular meaning.

A high leap and a clean re-entry can be a signal there are fish below.

A jump and a sharp tail slap is loud and far-reaching underwater,

so may help coordinate large pods.

It appears to be one of the easier moves,

and youngsters are keen to learn.

Mum shows him how an expert does it...

..and now it's baby's turn.

Young dolphins can stay with their mothers for up to three years,

so they get plenty of time to practise.

Synchronised leaping is more difficult to master.

Leaping may encourage dolphins to work together,

a vital skill for rounding up fish.

But the most spectacular jump and perhaps the hardest to master...

..is the acrobatic leap.

This one may be just for fun.

On the land beyond the Kaikoura coast, the shifting plates

which drive the canyon downwards now thrust the land upwards.

This creates a mighty chain of mountains

which form the spectacular backbone of the South Island.

The Southern Alps -

New Zealand's greatest wilderness.

Reaching almost 4,000 metres,

the mountains are still growing...

..despite the weight of some 3,000 glaciers slowly grinding them down.

This is New Zealand's most challenging terrain

with a climate to match.

Animals have to be tough and resourceful to survive here.

Sheep were introduced to New Zealand over 200 years ago.

With expert help, they can live in even the most extreme conditions.

But farmers must adapt to the violent swings of alpine weather,

and know when to act.

For sheep farmer Kate Cox,

protecting her precious flock is an extreme challenge.

So the property here's about 40,000 hectares, which is pretty big.

It stretches from the lake right through the mountains behind us,

through a couple of ranges of mountains.

So it would take maybe a couple of days to walk across it.

This is one of the biggest days in Kate's calendar.

Hey, girls. Are you excited?

The autumn sheep muster.

Good girl. Sit down. So basically an autumn muster...

They've been going on for about the last 150 years on this property,

and really all it entails is bringing down the sheep

from all the high summer's grazing in the mountain tops,

and bringing them down to lower levels

where they're going to be safe from snow during the winter.

For more than 100 years, the muster would have meant two days

of hard hiking. But Kate's team of shepherds have a helping hand -

a helicopter and some of the very few flying sheepdogs in the world.

Their goal today is to muster at least 4,000 sheep if they can.

Her brother Davie is the pilot.

Their family have been working these hills for 40 years.

Even for farming in New Zealand, this isn't your normal farming.

It's in the harshest environments that you can farm in New Zealand.

So yeah, it's a bit on the edge.

Right.

Kate has 29,000 merino sheep up here,

one of the very few breeds tough enough to survive.

But the winters are severe and too many would die in heavy snows

if they were left to roam all year round.

Today, Kate's team consists of five shepherds and ten dogs.

I'll head down that track to the grain.

Come with me...

The tactic is to start at the very top,

looking for the most adventurous sheep.

So up on the tops of the mountains, it's quite rugged.

A lot of rock, cliffs and a bit challenging at times.

A good rule of thumb is if your dogs don't want to follow you,

you shouldn't be going there either.

-RADIO:

-Have you just popped out on that ridgeline?

Can I see you up there?

Yeah, we are out on the ridgeline, but there's a bit of fog coming through.

You need to be able to look after yourself, look after your dogs,

and look after the stock, because, generally,

no-one's coming to help you.

The first sheep are soon flushed down from the high slopes.

Here's a mob coming down as well.

Kate and her dogs, Fudge and Fred, must intercept them.

We have a huntaway, which is a New Zealand breed,

which has got a bit of all sorts of things in it.

And they generally are big, noisy, rambunctious.

You're such a showboat, Fudge.

They get things moving.

So you bark your dogs and then everything

starts running off in front of you.

Fred, behind, Fred, behind.

As more sheep join the flock,

the challenge is to keep them moving without triggering a stampede.

Get down.

Get out of there, Fred.

They've had no contact with people or dogs for the past four months.

And a panic on these slopes would be a disaster.

Good girl, good girl.

Hey, hey, hey.

Nowhere else are such huge numbers of sheep

herded over such distances on foot.

Been gathering up a lot of sheep -

we've probably got about 800 or 900 now, which is good.

We'll collect a lot more as we come a bit further.

But, yeah, they're walking really well

and making good progress and going quite quick.

Quiet.

Kate's record is mustering 10,000 sheep in a single day.

A flock like this can stretch for over a mile.

Wahoo! Ho, ho, ho, ho!

Hold it, Fred, hold it there, Freddie.

After 12 hours and a 13-mile hike, this part of the muster is complete,

and the sheep are safe in their winter pastures by the lake.

Yeah, no, it's great, getting the job done.

Especially when you have a few hiccups during the day,

it's always good to get done and have everybody home in one piece.

He's timed it just perfectly -

just before dark, home in time for tea.

There are places where New Zealand's sheep have never reached.

The wild, mountainous heart of New Zealand hides

some of the most ancient secrets on earth.

Far beyond the reach of people

are hidden valleys, full of prehistoric life.

Huge trees and giant tree-ferns,

whose ancestors lived 100 million years ago,

still thrive here today thanks to New Zealand's long isolation.

These are forests that a dinosaur might recognise,

living links to New Zealand's primeval past.

Around 16 months ago, a mother laid these eggs, buried them,

and then left them to their fate.

Only in a special filming burrow

can we capture intimate details like this egg tooth.

Tuatara are the last survivors of an ancient dynasty of reptile

which flourished during the Jurassic age.

These baby predators need to eat to grow quickly.

But for youngsters this small, it's eat or be eaten.

There is the threat of prehistoric predators.

Adult tuatara are more than 50 times as big.

They are known to be cannibals.

If you want to avoid being dish of the day

then the trick is to stay absolutely still.

Fortunately, a cockroach is a tasty distraction.

But even the bugs can be deadly.

Giant centipedes more than six inches long

would make short work of a baby tuatara.

And velvet worms have digestive saliva.

They've been on patrol for 500 million years.

Best give her a wide berth.

He's still hungry...

..and this fat and juicy insect is packed with protein.

Another prehistoric New Zealand specialty, a weta.

In this topsy-turvy land,

a baby tuatara needs to learn the bugs can be bigger than the beasts.

The trees here are as prehistoric as the wildlife.

And the most spectacular are an ancient family,

the podocarps.

These mighty conifers are of special significance

to the first settlers of New Zealand, the Maori.

Hey, that one's a beauty.

-Yeah.

-It's not bad, eh?

Mike Bradley is a chief of the local Rangitane tribe

from the Marlborough Sounds, and a distinguished Maori carver.

Well, this is a native called totara.

This tree is about 40 metres high

and I would think it's about 700 to 1,000 years old.

It's in good nick.

Mike and his son Joel have one of the largest private collections

of Maori woodcarvings in the world.

The wood of these native podocarps is especially prized.

These trees are now protected by law and even if I could

cut one of these down, I wouldn't,

because I have far too much respect for these big old giants.

Mike and Joel have come up with an ingenious and sustainable way

of sourcing this rare and precious material.

Well, what we do is we go fishing for trees up the Pelorus River

and then through time they've fallen down into the river.

They eventually get washed down into the tidal estuary here, where we've

been going for the last 25 years to collect some of these logs.

Some of the logs are huge here, some of them are 30-50 tonnes.

You know, as big as a big truck.

This looks good.

When we first started removing the logs from the river,

recovering them, it was quite challenging,

all of the things we had to do.

Do you want these side-by-side or what?

No, I want this one right under.

Over the years, we've just worked out a technique

where we just use fishing floats and the tide.

The Pelorus River has a two-metre tidal range,

easily enough to lift the old tree from the riverbed.

Now, these podocarps, some of them are up to 1,000 years old

before they even fall into the Pelorus.

And they can stay lodged in the mud for hundreds of years.

So these logs would have been standing where humans weren't even

in New Zealand and there would have only have been birds and insects.

Some of these trees,

you sit back and you look at them and you wonder what they saw

in their lifetime when they were standing in the forests.

It must have been paradise back then.

Mike uses the logs to record Maori history and tradition.

Because Maori hadn't developed a written language,

and so the only language we had was really carving in wood.

The Maori were the first people here,

they had to pass on their knowledge to the next generation,

and so the only way of recording all that was in wood.

It was a record of important events and places.

The piece that Mike has been carving today tells of the most bizarre

of the New Zealand's forest spirits.

A creature that almost no-one ever sees.

These are extremely rare and only come out at night.

One of the few places to glimpse them is at the Otorohanga sanctuary

in the North Island.

In the dead of night,

a brown kiwi leaves his burrow for the pitch dark

of the primeval New Zealand forest.

A kiwi is a most distinctive and peculiar type of bird.

He's about the size and weight of a stout chicken,

but he's more closely related to an ostrich.

To help them locate underground prey in the soil,

kiwis are the only birds in the world

to have nostrils at the tip of their bills.

It's more like a snout,

perfect for rooting around for grubs.

But, right now, the kiwis here have something else on their minds.

A female sings an alluring serenade.

Love is in the air.

These birds are a part of a habituated group,

which means we can film intimate details of their private behaviour.

Brown kiwis often mate for life and females are very fussy.

In kiwi couples, the ladies are normally the ones in charge,

but he's happy to follow her around.

He flirts by grunting and tapping her bottom with his beak.

She takes a lot of persuading, but eventually succumbs to his charms.

The female lays an egg in her mate's burrow,

but she leaves him to care for it alone.

He'll spend most of the next three months sitting right here.

A kiwi egg is enormous.

It weighs in at almost half a kilo, most of which is yolk.

It's one of the largest eggs in proportion to body size for any bird

and it needs one of the longest incubations.

It can take three days

for a chick to battle its way out of the thick shell.

By the time baby hatches,

Dad may have lost a quarter of his body weight through incubating

his giant egg, and his work is not over yet.

He's taken great care to hide the nest entrance,

but Junior just won't be left behind.

Kiwis can't see well in the dark,

so he's taking his first tentative steps into a pitch-black world.

He still has the remains of the giant yolk inside him,

which means he won't have to eat for the first few days.

But he's very unsteady on his feet,

and, in the darkness, his anxious dad never lets him out of reach.

His beak serves as an excellent toddler's rein.

This little bundle of fluff will stay with his dad

until he is steadier and able to fend for himself.

New Zealand's ancient isolation

allowed many strange creatures to evolve here.

But the geological forces which created so much life in this land

also have the power to destroy it.

The country is fissured and fractured by underground faults

that can rupture without warning.

At 12.51 on 22nd February, 2011,

one city's future was changed forever.

Elisabeth Pitcorn worked in the city centre of Christchurch.

So many memories.

I remember the whole day, I remember every single detail of that day,

and I will for the rest of my life.

On the day of the earthquake I was working up on the first floor

of the old Post Office building in Cathedral Square in Christchurch.

It was about lunchtime that the first tremor struck.

It was actually really terrifying.

After the shaking stopped, we just grabbed everything that was handy

and just left the building.

Unfortunately, we walked past some pretty horrific scenes.

One of my colleagues just said, "Oh, my God, the cathedral."

I happened to have my camera in my bag with me that day and I guess

I naturally started taking some photos and it was at that point that

I really realised how serious this earthquake actually was.

It was one of New Zealand's largest and most devastating earthquakes.

It occurred unexpectedly close to the Earth's surface, so the ground

under the city was shaken in a particularly violent way.

The movement of the ground accelerated faster

than any other earthquake ever recorded in New Zealand,

resulting in huge damage.

There were buildings crumbling all around us

as all the aftershocks rolled through.

I remember I looked down at the ground and the cracks started

opening up and they were moving backwards and forwards

and at that point I actually had this thought of,

"This ground is going to open up and swallow me."

185 people lost their lives and the damage is estimated at £17 billion.

But five years on,

the people of Christchurch are learning and rebuilding.

Liz is part of Christchurch's recovery.

Shall we start at the window and come back around,

right around to the front?

She works with drones to survey areas of the city

ruined by the quake.

Honestly, I think the people of Christchurch now are all geologists.

I certainly know a lot more about earthquakes than I ever needed to or

even wanted to, but I guess we all know how to be safe in one as well.

It's vital work, which is part of the rebuilding of the city.

You think, that stuff doesn't happen in my city, you know?

But I guess it did, so we've got to be real about it and move forward

and build a new Christchurch.

The earthquake wasn't a freak event.

Around 20,000 are recorded in New Zealand every year.

Most are small tremors,

but the threat of another major quake is never far away.

Nowhere here is immune to the country's active

and sometimes violent geology.

Even Auckland, the country's largest city and home to 1.5 million people,

is built on an active volcano field.

The volcano Rangitoto dominates Auckland Harbour.

Although it last erupted 600 years ago,

many of its lava fields are still black and almost barren to this day.

But hidden beneath the lifeless surface is one of New Zealand's

most unusual natural features.

Thousands of tonnes of liquid rock once raced through these lava tubes

at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Cavers have mapped a network of over 200 of these tubes under Auckland,

stretching for miles.

The air here is humid, carrying just enough moisture to spark life.

These are aerial roots.

They attract and absorb moisture directly from the air.

The roots power fresh green growth in the lava above.

A pohutukawa tree,

a miracle of life from almost nothing...

..providing a midsummer feast for the birds.

The tui's curved beak is perfect for sipping nectar.

The kaka opts for the pollen.

Pohutukawa trees can live for more than 1,000 years.

They bloom in December,

so they're often called New Zealand's Christmas tree.

Each has the miraculous ability

to transform a barren volcanic wasteland into a garden of life.

Of all the species that have flourished in New Zealand,

perhaps it's the pohutukawa tree that has best met the challenges

of this demanding and beautiful land.

All across New Zealand,

life battles the geological forces which give this land its power...

..and its beauty.

From the pioneers of the high country

to dolphins leaping over the deep...

..and tiny aerial aces who dare to hunt...

..in sizzling volcanic steam...

..New Zealand is magnificent and mysterious.

A land apart, shaped by its extraordinary past

and facing a restless future.

Of all the locations the New Zealand team filmed,

perhaps the most magical...

..were the Snares Islands.

A shoot cameraman Mark MacEwen is very much looking forward to.

Sometimes you get very, very lucky as a wildlife cameraman

and you get asked to go to some places that are completely unique.

The Snares Island, which is found between New Zealand and

the Subantarctic, is just one of those places when you know

you're going to have this amazing adventure getting there.

I mean, what's better? What beats that?

There's never been a human settlement on the Snares,

so its wild residents should behave in a totally natural manner.

In theory, anyway.

But the first hurdle is getting there.

Between the mainland and the Snares

lie the Southern Ocean's infamous Roaring Forties.

These are rough and unpredictable seas -

an alarming prospect.

When you hear that you're going down towards the Subantarctic,

it kind of... Thoughts of the Roaring Forties

and boats being lost at sea enter your mind.

I mean, they really do. I know what the weather's like down there,

I know what the seas can be like down there,

and they're marginally terrifying.

To make matters worse, there will be eight people and all this equipment

on board this little yacht.

Tiama was our boat and it was a fairly small yacht,

not quite as large as I'd expected, I have to say.

Fortunately, the man in charge is veteran yachtsman Henk Haazen,

who built Tiama to withstand this ocean.

You put an awful lot of trust in this one man, who is pretty amazing,

I would give him his dues.

But I'm not a fan of huge, rolling, open ocean

and that's kind of what we spent the next few days in.

I had a small window and all I could see was the sea raising and lowering

itself over the side of the boat.

I lay there slightly fearful, waiting for it to be over.

After 120 gruelling miles,

the first to spy land is producer Mark Flowers.

Well, this is what we've come to see -

24 hours over the Southern Ocean in the Roaring Forties

and this is Snares Island.

The relief of actually getting to Snares is short-lived.

Well, the journey's only part of it.

It's when you get there that the next problem starts, and the thing

we've found with Snares is it's such a steep-sided island.

None of us had quite anticipated how we were going to get on it.

One of the key filming locations,

known as Penguin Cliff, is simply too steep to land on in a swell.

Then, a stroke of luck.

The weather unexpectedly clears and the crew can finally get onshore.

I came to Subantarctica to get a suntan.

Now they can start filming.

Just one problem -

the penguins.

I'm sat here trying to film the penguins in between the water,

so one minute they're teetering on the brink and I'm ready to go

and the next minute they're running backwards,

then they go forwards again.

I'm just waiting for one to start going and the rest will follow,

but at the moment it's just backwards and forwards,

backwards and forwards.

Because nobody has ever lived on the Snares,

the penguins have no fear of people and they are very curious animals.

One of the things with being a wildlife cameraman

I've spent most of my career doing is trying to creep up

or get really close to animals without being observed,

and Snares was the complete opposite.

I couldn't get the animals to stop looking at me.

It was like I was television for a change.

It was almost impossible at times

to get them to do anything other than stand there.

"Oh, yeah."

The only thing that makes this island accessible

are the miles of track that the penguins

have created through the forest.

But the crew quickly realise that this is an island more suited

to penguins than to people.

Very few people have ever set foot on Snares

and one of the things with that is it means there are no paths,

there's no real access to anywhere on the island.

But the island is covered in these really gnarly,

dense old trees everywhere.

And the floor falls away from bird burrows

and it's a really difficult place to navigate,

particularly if you're my size.

Because it's designed for things that are that big...

The crew must struggle up to the top of the island because a key scene

is to film the birds climbing Penguin Cliff.

This is it?

Well, no, there's...

You've got to go down there.

Down there? That does look quite a sheer drop.

It's hard to explain the scale

and the sheer, steep sides of those cliffs.

The camera doesn't really do it justice a lot of the time,

but looking down you could suddenly start to feel your heart-rate going.

Mark does a recce to find a safe ledge on the cliff for the camera.

The director said it would be fine to send me down there.

Looking at it, it is quite steep.

If the penguins can do it, so must the crew.

Before the trip, the team had assumed that penguins

are ill-equipped for cliff climbing, but in reality,

their low centre of gravity and sharp, gripping claws

make them surprisingly adept.

I'm amazed penguins can do this.

Who would have thought it? It's incredible.

Look at them.

The team stayed for ten days with no accommodation.

Each evening they returned to the Tiama, which has its drawbacks.

One of the problems with sharing a boat with that many people is that

there is a real lack of privacy when you need it.

But on the island there was a very small basic loo next to a little hut.

I headed in that direction, but sadly found

someone else had beat me to the queue.

A young male New Zealand sea lion.

And he's standing between me and the toilet,

which is an emergency situation.

That's it, go on.

Like a truculent teenager, he seems to resent being disturbed.

And a desperate cameraman is an easy target.

One of the big things with sea lions is that they are large,

they are slightly aggressive and they really smell,

I mean really smelly, stinky fish, it's horrendous.

Any hints or tips?

The crew have to gang up on him and eventually he backs down.

All right, there we go, ten minutes later.

Despite the dangers and discomfort,

the team finally get what they came for - an intimate glimpse

into the lives of these remarkable birds and their unique home.

For me, what has been so special about Snares Island

is it's where the Subantarctic meets the forest.

And these two worlds collide and it's just wonderful.

I'll miss it, actually.

How could you not miss this?

Next time, we voyage deep into the dramatic landscapes

of New Zealand's wildest places

to discover their strange and surprising wildlife -

secret dells lit by mysterious fairy lights...

..sneaky snails with a killer bite...

..and death-defying insects.

Animals who face the most extreme conditions in the land.