Raoul Island Survivor – outweed, outplay and outlast

Wednesday, 16 August 2017

Halfway between New Zealand and Tonga lies a sub-tropical island paradise few will ever visit.

Pōhutukawa, with leaves twice as big as their mainland counterparts, cover the island.

Tui, parakeets and petrel populate the skies. The snorkelling is spectacular.

But the island is not open to the public and the lucky few who are allowed to visit and stay must first make it through a Survivor-style five-day 'shakedown'.

Every year a handful of people are selected by the Department of Conservation (DoC) to become Raoul Island rangers, who spend a year living on the island eradicating weeds.

Short-listed candidates are taken to a remote New Zealand location for five days on what DoC calls a shakedown.

Mock scenarios assess whether they have the teamwork and skills to survive on the beautiful, but deadly, island.

Retired senior ranger Paul Rennie said the biggest risk on Raoul, apart from it being an active volcano prone to cyclones, was that is could take up to four days before help can get there if there was a real problem. So the team chosen must work well together.

'If you have people up there that don't get on, it can lead to some pretty horrendous outcomes. Not only for the individual but for the group,' Rennie said.

Rennie has visited the island 29 times, and helped recruit rangers for seven years, before retiring.

The shakedown idea and name stemmed from his military background where prior to operations they would 'shake things down' to see how they fitted.

'There are probably about seven or eight different roles on the island that need to get filled and we want to put the right people in the right role. Quite often you don't see that until you see people out in a remote location, without cell phones.'

Scenarios given to the candidates range from dealing with injured team mates, to debating an ethical situation.

A psychologist is involved in the process and all of the scenarios are designed to understand how the candidates will cope with working on a remote island in close-quarters with people.

Candidates who make it through the shakedown then have eight to ten weeks of training before becoming rangers.

'They've got to know how to pull teeth, set bones, drive tractors, operate chainsaws, drive boats…do MetService work, and work for a number of other organisations.

'They need to know rope work, and how to operate around helicopters, just in case there's a medivac.'

Raoul has a history of being treacherous for visitors with two people dying on the island.

On was killed in a volcanic eruption and another was washed from the rocks while taking sea temperature readings.

On the positive side, Rennie said 99.9 per cent of people who worked on Raoul Island came back changed for the better.

Jamie Carey, who returned from a year on the Island in April, agreed.

'You can't go through that experience without being changed by it. It's quite unique.'

For him, the change came from the isolation and having to be self-directed.

'When we experience problems, hurdles, we can't call a plumber or mechanic. You've got to come up with a solution yourself.  I'm certainly more confident in making decisions.'

Rangers spend their days on Raoul Island searching the dense bush for weeds.

Casual ranger, Cindy Smith, who worked on Raoul and is now helping with the recruiting, said the weeding was physically demanding and rangers needed to be fit.

'You have to grid search these very steep plots which are basically on a volcano in a row of five people for example. We're only a metre and a half away or two metres apart and you can hardly see each other.'

But it's not all hard work. After a day of weeding a home-brewed beer from The Rat and Tui brewery provides welcome relief.

Rangers have brewed their own beer for around 30 years and the name of each brew and the date it was made is written on the walls of the brewery. Alliteration is rife and some names are not printable.

'They've all got these really eccentric and funny names. You can stand there for hours just reading these weird names of brews.'

She said after a year of drinking their inventive beers with cardamom or chilli coming back to the mainland and drinking commercially produced beer was weird.

'It tastes terrible.'

For Rennie, the impact of the 29 visits to the island remains even in retirement.

'I've always had a very special connection with the island, going back to when I first went there in 1975. Not all of it has been pleasant but it's all been pretty significant in my life.'

Applications for rangers close September 1. 

* Farah Hancock is a Wintec Journalism student.