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What was that?!

© Philippa Jane Ballantine

New Zealand is a young country, but it does have its fair share of legends, ghosts and myths. And some of the most persistent mysteries are the continued sightings of odd creatures in the mountains, streams, and harbors.

New Zealand was the home to the moa. A huge variety of these massive flightless birds lived here, and even after it went extinct there are continuing stories about sightings of it in the wilds. The countryside is after all full of dense ferns and thick bush, and it is places such as this that breed legends of mysterious animals. Scotland may have its Loch Ness monster, but New Zealand has an even wider collection of oddities.

The only native mammals in New Zealand are bats, and yet rumors persist of various types of creatures with four legs and fur prowling the waterways and bush. The land may have many unique and wonderful birds, but there is a distinct lack of mammals. Captain James Cook in 1773 visited in his ship the Resolution, and reported seeing a creature the size of a cat, although his own naturalists admittedly suggested that it perhaps was really just the ship’s cat.

But he was not the only one to see such animals. Most reports come from the Fiordland area, where the dense bush and isolation might well shelter any number of odd animals. In 1811 passengers on board the brig Mary and Sally reported having seen a creature which they described as being similar to a hyena on Campbell Island.

In 1831 a group of sailors stationed at Dusky Bay had an even odder encounter. They reported having seen something resembling a huge kangaroo, some thirty feet high, which bounded quickly away, and swam away down the bay. Of course this sounds a little more unlikely, and was probably more to do with their rum consumption than anything else.

One of the most tenacious tales is about something living in the water. And there something slightly more believable about New Zealand having otters. The sightings of such creatures are numerous, and therefore more difficult to discount.

In 1884 an expedition through Canterbury and Otago heard from local Maori how there were beavers building homes and dams in the area. Then in 1848 an early collector of birds, Walter Mantell, wrote to his father of stories he had heard from Maori about an animal they called kaureke, which was described as about two feet long, furry, and laid eggs. Although Mantell offered a reward for the skin of the creature, he never got one. But other sources, such the Reverend R Taylor, and Tamihana Te Rauparaha also wrote about a similar creature.

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