Beyond the Edge Beyond the Bar: 13.17 Milford Sound: Fiordland National Park

17.A Reflectance of the Earl Mountains (in the Southern Alps)

Milford Sound is one of several so-called ‘sounds’—fiords carved out by glaciers—that constitute the star attractions of New Zealand’s largest national park, Fiordland National Park. The park is located in the far southwest of the South Island, along the Tasman coast. Anytime you’ve got glaciers you’ve got to have not only cold conditions, but ample moisture to feed the glaciers, namely, about 150 feet or 45 meters of snow annually. The Earth is still in a glacial age, but conditions are much warmer now than during the height of the ice age, when the fiords of Fiordland were being carved out.

In New Zealand the icy conditions may now prevail only at high altitudes but the precipitation remains. The village of Milford Sound (population 120), at the head of the fiord, receives 6.8 meters (or about 22.1+ feet) of rain annually. It’s the rainiest inhabited place in New Zealand and presumably one of the rainier inhabited places in the world. It should come as no surprise that fresh water about 3 meters deep overlays the salt water in Milford Sound.

Milford Sound is just about 71 km (or 44 miles) by air from Queenstown but it’s like a world removed from that town. Most visitors to Milford Sound come for the day, having traveled to and from the place by buses. The return (round-trip) journey between Queenstown and Milford Sound takes a full 12 hours including sight-seeing stops and covers a total of about 580 km (or 360 miles).

Unless tourists have decided to lodge at least one night at Milford Sound, they would be well advised either to fly over the fiord from Queenstown or at much lower cost to take a tour bus from Queenstown. There are a number of tour bus operators serving Milford Sound, including Great Sights, Naked Bus, and Jucy Cruize Bus. We took the Jucy Cruize bus which (as customary) provided for a cruise on the fiord. Our bus driver was informative, helpful, and skilled. This is no small matter on sinuous mountain highways.

When we visited Queenstown, New Zealand was still observing Daylight Savings Time. Departure from the resort town to Milford Sound was between 8:00 and 8:30 AM, depending on where you were picked up in town. In Standard Time, the pickups are now as early as 6:50 AM. All bus tours follow the same route, going south on NZ Route 6 along Lake Wakatipu to Five Rivers, then cutting over on Route 97 to Route 94, which is followed all the way to Milford Sound.

On the outbound journey from Queenstown, our driver (as is customary) made a number of stops. The first, a refreshment stop, was made at the town of Te Anau (population about 1900), the last 'big' town before Milford Sound. Te Anau serves not only as a gateway to Milford Sound but to other oft-visited fiords in Fiordland, including Doubtful and Dusky sounds. Milford Sound is the most visited fiord, not least because it is the only one practically accessible by road for day tours.

Route 94, the Milford Road, follows the east shore of Lake Te Anau north of Te Anau. The lake itself is a glacial creation with three fiords (called 'fiords'). Between Te Anau and Milford Sound our driver made several scenic stops, usually of about 15 minutes duration each. As we headed north we headed into the native southern beech forests that cover so much of the lower flanks of the Southern Alps. The five species of southern beech trees present in New Zealand are all evergreen.

The first scenic stop was at a flats (Photo 17.C) that once served as a sheep meadow. Another was at a chasm, where I confess I was more taken with the friendly kea (Photos 17.D & E). The kea is the world’s only alpine parrot. The species is quite intelligent and bold. And the particular one shown in the accompanying photos was favored by our driver, who hastened to say he fed the bird only seeds and berries. No snacks or chips, which would not help the bird’s health.

My favorite scenic stop was at some mirror lakes. Needless to say, these aren’t the only mirror lakes in Fiordland. But they happen to be adjacent to Route 94 (Photos 17.A, G, and H). They were a beautiful 'extra' on our excursion to see Milford Sound.

One reason that Milford is accessible by motor vehicles is that a William Homer suggested (apparently in the 1890s) that a tunnel be bored underneath a mountain saddle that he and another man had discovered. Work on the tunnel began in 1935. It was finally opened to traffic in 1954, following the interruption of World War 2 and of an avalanche. Travel through the Homer Tunnel (1.2 km or 0.75 miles in length) is controlled by signals, because the tunnel bore admits traffic in only one direction at a time. The approaches to the tunnel are subject to avalanches at any time.

Once thru the tunnel one descends a bit of a corkscrew into the Cleddau River Valley, one of several valleys whose waters feed Milford Sound. At the head of the sound in the village is a rather newish docking facility for the numerous boats that serve tourists. The boats take turns departing from the piers and then follow a clockwise route out to land's end (where one catches a glimpse of the Tasman Sea), returning along the north side of the fiord to the dock.

We saw seals and dozens of dolphins (though only a few got captured on film). Birds were also out and about. But perhaps one of the main attractions were the waterfalls. Some falls are, as it were, perpetual. Many more appear only when it rains. Some argue that the best time to see Milford Sound is when it rains, when many, many waterfalls grace the walls of the fiord. Since it rains on average 182 days a year, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of seeing the fiord in the rain. We saw it without the rain and can testify that Milford (with or without many waterfalls) is worth the long day’s trek by bus from Queenstown.

Rudyard Kipling is alleged to have said that Milford Sound is the Eighth Wonder of the World. There are a number of such places across the face of the earth, no doubt. Jean and I are thankful to have seen this one. Eius gloriam Deo gratias.

Warm regards,

Tim (& Jean)