A depiction of rats streaming off a ship in New Zealand

Image: Tina Tiller

BooksSeptember 28, 2021

Teeth and claws and tenacity: how Norway rats came to New Zealand

Guest writer

Image: Tina Tiller

In her new book Invasive Predators in New Zealand: Disaster on Four Small Paws, zoologist Carolyn M. King tells the immigration story of the Norway rat.

Editor’s note: The book’s also about kiore and ship rats, mice, mustelids, rabbits, cats and hedgehogs, and it’s terrific. This excerpt has been abridged for length.

Norway rats are large, tough animals adapted to cold, wet conditions. They are very good at swimming in cool water and digging burrows, but they are too heavy to be good at climbing. On land, generations of rats have gnawed through solid wooden barn doors to get at stored grain. At sea, they thrived in the damp, unheated cargo holds of sailing ships, finding feed and shelter in inaccessible corners well out of danger from crew, fumigation or ships’ cats.

Ships of the early 19th century were constructed of natural materials (timber for hull and masts, and flax for cordage and sails), all eminently gnawable. Wooden structures, sails and rigging, even the interior of the hull itself, were all defenceless against a rat’s sharp incisors. Contemporary records frequently mention the damage done by stowaway rats, which were never named, but were probably all Norway rats.

Rodger’s detailed description of the British Navy of the Georgian era (1714–1830) comments that:

Rats were always present, and always hungry, [and, along with scorpions, centipedes and other pests which were regarded as] native to the wooden world. Whenever stores of any sort were missing … and had to be accounted for, the standard explanations were “lost overboard” or “eaten by rats”, and there was virtually nothing which could not plausibly have gone one way or the other.

Rats could easily destroy most of the easily accessible sacks of dry provisions on board. Meat packed in wooden casks was better protected, but that made it only slightly more challenging. In the days before any efficient means of preserving perishable food had been invented, the usual way to keep meat edible during a long voyage was pickled in salt. Rats could gnaw through the casks to get at the meat, and even if they did not eat it all, the leakage would allow the rest to spoil.

A photo of two dead rats, the front one larger and generally thicker-looking than the other — Portraits of a Norway rat (front) and a ship rat (Photo: Bruce Patty)

Rat-infested whaling ships, whose very timbers must have been redolent with delicious-smelling oil and strewn with scraps of blubber and meat, cruised around the coasts of New Zealand for decades between the 1780s and 1830s. Their generally filthy condition supported hordes of cockroaches, which in turn supplied abundant additional food for rats. Living quarters for the crew on one of the worst, the Julia on a whaling cruise in the south Pacific, were described by Herman Melville as bad enough already, without the additional misery that:

we had not the undisputed possession of them. Myriads of cockroaches, and regiments of rats, disputed the place with us. … it is almost impossible to get rid of them … the vermin seem to take possession, the sailors being mere tenants by sufferance … [On] the Julia, these creatures [the cockroaches] never had such free and easy times as they did in her crazy old hull; every chink and cranny swarmed with them; they did not live among you, but you among them … [The rats were] tame as Trenck’s mouse, they stood in their holes peering at you like old grandfathers in a doorway. Often they darted in upon us at mealtimes, and nibbled our food. [Baron von der Trenck was an imprisoned Austrian military officer who had a tame mouse as a companion.]

Fumigation was almost the only method of cleaning out the rats from the hold, and even that, as Melville noted, didn’t work very well. It was also dangerous to the crew. The master of the Lancaster, an American whaling ship from New Bedford at anchor in Kororāreka, accidentally caused the death by suffocation of one of his own crew while the ship was being fumigated for rats.

The ships maintained and manned by the Royal Navy may have been kept somewhat cleaner, but even they could not escape their unwelcome passengers. A large part of the reason why not is that they routinely carried their fresh meat on the hoof. For the sake of avoiding months of dependence on salt pork, ships carried live cattle and sheep, pigs and goats, hens and geese in great numbers. The noise and mess they made in the already crowded accommodation below decks was disruptive, but accepted as part of everyday life for officers and men on board. Somehow, they managed to combine the disciplined efficiency of a man-of-war with large elements of the farmyard and travelling circus. Rats were, of course, the inevitable beneficiaries of these chaotic arrangements.

After a long voyage far from any port, a ship’s hull would accumulate a heavy load of weed and barnacles that could easily become a drastic brake on its speed. Then, the captain would look for a safe opportunity to beach the vessel in order to careen it. On James Cook’s first visit to New Zealand, he took the chance to careen the Endeavour on the beach at a quiet anchorage in Queen Charlotte Sound. The crew laid the hull over on the larboard (port) side, scrubbed the bottom clean, then righted it and laid it over on the starboard side for scrubbing, before finally righting and re-floating it. The whole procedure took three days, from 16 to 18 January 1770, thereby providing the absolutely ideal conditions for rats to reach the land. No one thought of the possible consequences for native fauna, or preventing them from leaving the ship, even had that been possible – on the contrary, it is more likely that the crew would help them go.

Left panel is an oil painting showing a tree trunk being used as a plank between a sailing ship and the Fiordland shore. Right panel is a book cover showing a rat. — HMS Resolution in Pickersgill Harbour, Dusky Sound, March 1773, painted by William Hodges, National Maritime Museum (Image: Supplied)

During Cook’s second visit to New Zealand, he brought the Resolution close in to shore in Dusky Sound in March 1773, and made use of a fallen tree trunk to provide a handy gangway for the crew and their animal companions to reach the land. The Resolution was certainly “much pestered” by rats, and therefore, also carried cats, so Cook was glad to see that “the vermin could walk ashore across the bridge”. He could hardly have made it easier for the first of the four-legged Europeans, Norway rats and cats, to reach the previously inaccessible Fiordland forests which his companions described so well. Cook could not at that time have guessed the massive scale of the consequences that could follow, but at least one member of his ship’s company was apprehensive. Anders Sparrman was working in Cape Town when Cook arrived in 1772, and was invited to join the crew as an assistant naturalist to Johann and Georg Forster. In Dusky Sound, Sparrman noticed with regret the exodus of alien animals from the Resolution.

In May 1773, Cook moved the Resolution north to meet its companion the Adventure in Queen Charlotte Sound, where Pickersgill’s log records the “Sailmakers repairing Sails which we find much damag’d by the Rats”. Meanwhile, William Bayly, the astronomer aboard the Adventure, cleared a patch of bush for his observatory. Sparrman commented on the abundance of rats in the disturbed area. He was “mortified at the thought of being responsible for introducing such animals”.

[ … ]

Throughout much of the 19th century, Norway rats continued to take over New Zealand in their millions, setting back human endeavours across both main islands. In 1840, a Sydney firm attempted to establish a rural farming settlement at Riccarton, now part of suburban Christchurch. They sent a manager, two farmhands and two teams of bullocks to plough and sow a 30-acre block. Within less than a year, they abandoned the effort after “numberless rats attacked the garnered stores”. Remains of mummified rats have been recovered from under-floor and ceiling spaces of historic buildings in the Bay of Islands, including the old school room in the Stone Store at Kerikeri, and in Pompallier House in Russell.

Horrific nightmare image of a mummified rate in a drawer that also inexplicably contains a doll's head — Mummified rat preserved at Pompallier House, Russell, resting on a dishcloth stolen from the kitchen. The case label identifies it as a ship rat, but the large size, small ears and short thick tail are much more typical of Norway rats. (Photo: Carolyn M. King)

Some European observers recounted their experiences in chilling detail. In 1877, the hordes of rats pestering the early settlers in Otago were described by R. Gillies, a Fellow of the Linnaean Society and member of the Council of the New Zealand Institute:

Wherever you pitched your camp away in the wilderness, where never human foot before trod, there rats would be as abundant as near the settlers’ homes … in the Taieri Plain near Otohiro in the year 1852 [I saw] rats running here and there in all directions from the horse’s feet. When a new settler settled anywhere alone … the rats … stole everything from him … [when camping] we got so accustomed to the rats that we never felt inconvenienced by feeling them running … even on top of us as we lay in bed. So tame were they that when the candle was lit in the tent they would come peering in at the door or under the curtain looking at you straight in the face with their earnest sharp gaze, and would only go when you shied something at them.

Andreas Reischek, an Austrian explorer and collector who came to New Zealand for two years in 1877 and stayed for 12, visited Chalky Sound in Fiordland, where he found the forest swarming with brown rats.

At night they kept me awake with their noise, knocking things down from the walls, gnawing at my stores and digging holes round the hut. They dug up the potatoes in the garden and dragged them away … they used to gnaw our books before our very eyes … these rats are the great enemies of birds, and any bird living or breeding near the ground has but a small chance of existing. They play havoc alike with eggs and young, and even attack the parent birds.

Eventually, towards the end of the 19th century in the South Island, astute explorers and surveyors like Charles Douglas began to notice an unexpected change in the rampant rat populations of the bush. While engaged in surveying work in the valley of the Waiho River in Westland in 1893, he reported that:

The Norwegian rat … which swarmed in the country at one time, is now becoming extinct from some cause or other, and the native and black rats are taking its place – two animals perhaps not quite so destructive as the grey gentleman.

The “two animals” mentioned by Douglas were, at that date, more likely to have been the brown and black forms of the ship rat, and alas, the exchange of personnel was anything but good news for the birds.

Invasive Predators in New Zealand: Disaster on Four Small Paws, by Carolyn M. King (Otago University Press, $50) can be ordered from Unity Books Auckland and is available from the Wellington store.

Keep going!

Toni Street may have travelled a hard road, but that doesn’t weigh down her new memoir. (Image: Tina Tiller)

BooksSeptember 27, 2021

Toni Street cracks open her past to share a life marked by grief

Sam Brooks

Contributing writer

Toni Street may have travelled a hard road, but that doesn’t weigh down her new memoir. (Image: Tina Tiller)

Lost and Found is a profound and brave addition to the celebrity memoir canon, writes Sam Brooks.

Simply put: Toni Street, who has had a national audience of one kind or another for 15 years, has gone through a lot. It shouldn’t be a surprise. She’s written a memoir, and people who haven’t lived all four letters of a life rarely go on to write those. (When they do, they don’t go well.)

It’s not a hard task to dismiss a celebrity memoir. You see them lining the shelves of bookstores and airport mini-marts. Rows and rows full of recognisable people holding expressions that align with their brand images. Evocative titles printed in a font you can read at 50 paces.

Half the work these books have to do is done before you even open the cover. So long as the book fulfils the basic promise – to give you a peek behind one specific curtain – then it gets a pass and a solid endorsement. Good writing helps, but it’s hardly essential. They’re easy reads, and even easier gifts.

There are those that really stand out, though. The gossipy ones, skimmed by journos vivisecting for headlines, come to mind, as do those that end up being image rehabilitation for a politician who would perhaps not like to be a politician any more (ahem). But then there are the ones that end up being profound beyond their subject. Just last year, Stan Walker’s excellent memoir, written with Margie Thomson, ended up being less the heartbreaking story of one man and more an ode to what kindness can do. Lost and Found, Toni Street’s new memoir written with Sophie Neville, fits into this latter category.

Left: book cover, Toni looking very beautiful, tawny makeup, blonde hair; Right: Toni knackered, in pink PJs on the couch, cuddling a sleeping bub — What kindness can do: Toni with her third child, Lachie, born via surrogacy with her best friend Sophie (Photo: Supplied)

Throughout her memoir she details, with remarkable clarity, those hardships. Three of her siblings have died. As a mother of two she was diagnosed with Churg-Strauss syndrome, an auto-immune disease that, to be blunt, absolutely devastates your organs. This syndrome made it unfeasible for her to carry another pregnancy. She had a third child through a surrogate, her best friend.

That makes it sound like a tough read, but it isn’t at all. Street is a warm person – you don’t generally maintain a national audience for over a decade by being chilly – and that translates easily to the page. She has a way of cracking open her past, realising the fact that someone’s worst day might not even count among her top 10, and moving on. More crucially, Street also has the assuredness of someone who’s been through stuff, and stands comfortably on the other side of it. After all, you only know how long the tunnel is after you go through it.

She takes a big risk, one that I can imagine turning people off within a few pages, but this risk actually ends up being one of the book’s greatest assets: she puts her grief right at the top.

I’m not going to beat around the euphemism: I’ve lost a lot of the closest people in my life. I will, however, engage in a metaphor. When you lose someone close to you, that grief becomes your most well-worn piece of clothing. You find different ways to style it, to accessorise it, but it’s always there in some shape or form.

When you lose a lot of people, as Street has, it’s like putting invisible stones in your pockets. With every new person you bring into your life, you have to gauge when to have the conversation. This might be relatable – we all have at least one conversation that everybody else gets to have once but we have to have over and over again. Mine is the grief conversation, and it always goes the same, so much so that my response of “Oh no, she’s dead. No, it’s all good. It’s probably not your fault!” tends to work every time. (I’m well-practised at both having, and ending, this conversation.)

Despite how good it feels to have that conversation – it feels like a real opening of the gates, or at least a lowering of the drawbridge – it’s not a conversation you put up front. Death is scary, but grief is terrifying. Someone else’s grief is a reminder that the worst, whatever that might be, can happen and that people can get through it. In fact, they have to, and it could happen to you! That’s why Street’s decision to put that grief up front is one I found tremendously gratifying, to the point of envy.

Within the first few pages, she writes this beautiful passage:

“My brother’s death becomes a seismic marker in my life – there’s the time before he died, and the time after. Twenty years on and I still view my life in those two distinct parts.”

There are chronological reasons why her grief might be up front. Lance, her twin, died when they were 18 months old. A year on, baby Tracy died just a few hours after being born. Then came a long idyllic gap until Stephen died at 14, when Toni was 18. But going in on these losses also gives the book a strong foundation. She speaks about not just her grief, but the grief of her family, with such forthrightness that we trust her. If she got through that, and got through telling that, then she can get through anything.

And she does.

Toni Street with executive producer Antony Stevens and co-host Rawdon Christie during her Breakfast days (Photo: Supplied)

Street’s keen sense, and sensitivity, of other people’s stories is a vital throughline of the memoir. She’s able to step outside her own perspective, and does so frequently. This shouldn’t be a surprise – Street is a journalist (as is Neville), and has told hundreds of stories that belong to and centre other people – but the memoir is a forgivably self-centred art form. Early on she spells it out: “This book is not my story, it’s ours. Writing about it is my way of honouring my parents and their experience.”

This is most obvious in the book’s opening section, which details the loss of her siblings. Her description of her brother in the hospital as the blood trolley comes down the hallway is particularly vivid (“every child on the cancer ward would start crying because they knew what was coming”), as is her harrowing, detail-rich description of Stephen’s death, obviously told to her second-hand. She also captures, with both the eye of a journalist and the heart of a deeply invested child, the anger of her mother being ignored by her doctor during her pregnancy. “The doctor kept on telling her all was well, but deep down she had a horrible feeling that things were not right. How could they be when she was bleeding almost every day?”

It’s less obvious, but perhaps even more important, when she discusses her surrogacy; and the decision-making between Toni and her best friend. Throughout this section, she repeatedly mentions how difficult the surrogacy process is in New Zealand – again, really, really hard! – and how people had been in touch with her about their own struggles with it.

My main takeaway from Street’s story, other than the facts of it, is how astutely she understands her role as a public figure. This is, after all, a woman who has spent a significant part of her life being beamed straight into people’s homes and commutes. This is also someone who has shared her life, regularly and bravely, through both traditional media and social media.

The value of that can’t really be underestimated. It’s not as simple as raising awareness, either. “People go through this and can survive” is nowhere near as effective as “I went through this, and I survived”. She’s clearly aware of the impact of sharing her stories – be they about her grief, her health or her surrogacy journey – and also probably aware this memoir is the best avenue through which to share them, for posterity. A 7pm broadcast is ephemeral, a social media post even more so, but a book lives on forever.

Lost and Found: My story of heartbreak and hope, by Toni Street with Sophie Neville (Allen & Unwin, $36.99), is available from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington.