3 - Cape Reinga to Lyttelton

Overview

In this third episode of Captain’s Log, Peter Elliott tracks Captain Cook’s journey down the west coast of the North Island. First he takes the Ranui down to Kaipara Harbour, before hitching a ride on the old kauri schooner Te Aroha to Queen Charlotte Sound. Elliott recounts the story of Cook’s realisation that a strait existed between the two islands, before a brief trip to Wellington on (now defunct) catamaran The Lynx. The episode's final stop is Elliott’s hometown of Lyttelton on the peninsula formerly known as Banks Island, where he takes a hair-raising dive on a lifeboat. "...He was almost certain that the charting that he'd done for the last three and a half months was in fact around an island. This discovery was so momentous that [Joseph] Banks insisted on calling this passage of water Cook Strait." – Presenter Peter Elliott, on James Cook's botanist Joseph Banks naming Cook Strait