‘But look at all this beauty’

said the hotel manager’s wife

when asked how she could bear to

live there. True: there was a fine bay,

The poem begins in media res, picking up midway through a conversation between the speaker and ‘the hotel manager’s wife’. This has the effect of leaving the context of the situation ambiguous to the reader, creating a theme of uncertainty. The ‘hotel manager’s wife’ is defending Stewart Island as a good place to live to the speaker who clearly believes the opposite, asking her ‘how could she bear to live there’. Stewart Island is undoubtedly a beautiful place evidently, however, this extends to being solely superficial in nature from the perspective of the speaker, whose reasons for resenting the island are intriguing to the reader.

all hills and atmosphere; white

sand, and bush down to the sea’s edge;

The speaker’s acknowledgement of the natural beauty of the ‘hills and atmosphere’ and ‘white sand’ paint an idyllic picture of the island, raising even more questions for her reasons to question how one ‘could bear to live there’ – from this picturesque imagery it sounds like paradise!

oyster-boats, too, and Maori

fishermen with Scottish names (she

ran off with one that autumn).

Maori people are indigenous Polynesian inhabitants of New Zealand (constituting 16.5% of the national population in the 2018 census) and the speaker reports that these fishermen working on Stewart Island had Scottish names. This is a  reference to the large community of New Zealanders who originate from Scotland or are of Scottish ancestry, with Scottish migration to New Zealand dating back to the earliest period of European colonisation. From this, and the fact that the hotel manager’s wife ‘ran off with one that autumn’, it is inferred that a westernisation of traditional aborigine culture is occurring (a sad loss of heritage) as well as the hotel manager’s wife not being as fond of the island as she let on previously.

As for me, I walked on the beach;

The poem switches to become introspective – with the speaker referring to herself in the first person for the first time and reflecting on her own thoughts and experiences of the island.

it was too cold to swim. My

seven-year-old collected shells

and was bitten by sandflies;

my four-year-old paddled, until

a mad seagull jetted down

to jab its claws and beak into

These lines suggest that the speaker’s resentment for the island are based on the realities of her experiences not aligning in perfection with the aesthetics of her surroundings. From the speaker’s perspective, these aesthetics prove meaningless in comparison to the realities of life somewhere which, on Stewart Island, she recalls as being far from idyllic; with it being too cold to swim and the island being home to swarms of ‘sandflies’ and killer seagulls. These portray the unpleasant realities of the island for which it’s superficial beauty is deceptive.

his head. I had already

decided to leave the country.

The reader gets the impression that the speaker has finally had enough! The inconveniences of Stewart Island have been the final straw in driving her to move away from New Zealand entirely. The poem ends on a humorous note, with these seemingly minor inconveniences leading the speaker to make such a rash judgement.