The scenery
Gough Island is a wild and beautiful island of high hills, deep valleys, gorges, little pools among the mountain bogs, rapid streams and magnificent sea cliffs. It is by far the most spectacular of the four islands of the Tristan group, even though it is less than half as high as Tristan itself (2986 feet as against Tristan's 6760 feet). The outstanding scenery of Gough Island arises from its great diversity of rock type and land form within its small total area of about 32 square miles.
The centre of Gough Island is a block of high plateaux,
forming a kind of pedestal for the main peaks. The plateaux
- with surfaces whose level expanse form a striking horizontal contrast
to the strong vertical relief all about them - lie at about 2100-2300
feet above the sea. From them rise four main peaks;Expedition Peak, a rocky dome 2981 feet high in the north, Edinburgh Peak, a young cone with a crater, rising in the centre of the island to 2986 feet, the highest point; Mount Rowett, a series of sharp peaks dissected from massive black basalt lavas just south of the centre; and South Peak, a gable of grass and basalt, dominating the southern lowlands. These uplands are part rocky and part grassy or boggy. In the north, about Expedition Peak, there are dome-shaped hills of barren rock, some of them jointed and twisted into fantastic forms, or set with columnar masses of rock like the Giant's Causeway of the Irish tourist posters. The grassy slopes of Edinburgh Peak or South Peak are tawny and brown between the black boulders; the plateaux are tinted red and green by the vivid mosses that cover them. The upland is an open, subantarctic world of subdued colour.
The eastern valleys are in complete contrast. Between North Point and Transvaal Bay, eight main valleys slice down to the north and east coasts, cutting through the basalt rocks in great gorges, and leaving knife edge ridges studded by airy pinnacles, walls, towers, and pagodas of stone. The streams draining these valleys are swift cascades, plunging over innumerable waterfalls, and often terminating at the sea cliffs in a final, unscalable, fall. These valleys, too, are green with dense vegetation of ferns, sedges, tree-ferns and a shrubby tree, Phylica arborea, which is the only common tree on the island.
The island is girdled by high cliffs; up to 1500 feet
high in places on the west and along the north east coast, and these
cliffs, evidence of the ceaseless attrition of land by sea, do much
to give the island its precipitous character. But on the south,
around Transvaal Bay and the South African state, all is different again.
Here the slopes of South Peak sink into a gently undulating lowland,
covered in dense woodland and fern, and bounded by cliffs only 100 to
150 feet high. From the station, as from the isolated hump of Richmond
Hill to the south west, and as in no other place on the island, the foothills
of the main peaks rise up beyond a foreground of rich, green lowland.
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The wild life
Oceanic islands like Gough Island arise by volcanic eruption in mid ocean and all the plants and animals that live there have had to colonise the islands across the sea. Only a few species are adapted to do this - have light seeds suited to carriage by wind or hooked barks suited to grip a bird's feathers and so travel that way. On Gough Island, despite the lush greenery of the vegetation, there are very few kinds of flowering plants and ferns (only about 60 in all). There are equally few kinds of insect, snail, or other small animals. Only two land birds - a little "bunting" and a land rail - occur on the island. No land animals belong there (though men have imported mice by mistake). This kind of poverty is entirely typical of such remote islands and it adds to the scientific interest of Gough rather than reduces it. For the vegetation include unusually pure growths of single plants - whole roods with but one tree: fern brakes with only one or two dominant ferns. The simplicity of the systems makes then especially interesting to study.
Once plants and animals get to Gough they are almost
cut off from interbreeding with the parent stocks from which they
came. Under different conditions, and in such isolation, they tend
to evolve into new species. The two land birds, the rail and
bunting, are found nowhere else in the world. The rail has
lost the power of flight - it can only flutter its wings as a help
in crossing a short gap. Many of the insects, the little snails and
the plants are also found nowhere else in the world. If it
is a poor flora and fauna it is also a unique one.Conversely, seabirds have no problem in reaching such remote islands. On land they have no enemies - except other birds. There are no cats, rats, snakes, wild dogs or other predatory creatures. On Gough, as on other remote islands, sea birds breed in vast numbers. On the mountains about 2000 pairs of wandering albatrosses - the largest flying birds in the world with wing spans up to 12 feet across - have their nest mounds and go through their extraordinary courtship ritual with wings spread wide and bills clicking. The cliffs and hill slopes are the haunt of the scalier sooty albatross, whose haunting cry echoes about the high valleys. Lower down the yellow nosed albatross, often called the mollyhawk, builds its earthen nest castle in clearings in the fern and bush. Around the coasts rockhopper penguins - small penguins with heads crowned with long yellow tassets of feathers - breed in vast numbers. Underground, in burrows among the grass tussocks of the coastlands, the ferns, or the hill grasslands, nest innumerable petrels - the "night birds" so called because the adults relieve one another at the nest and feed their young at night. Darkness on Gough Island at most seasons is full of birds and noisy with gurgling calls. The only enemy of these birds is the skua, heavy-bodied brown, like a large gull, which hawks for night birds in the dusk and is quick to pounce on one that shows itself to daylight or lies injured among the vegetation.
Like the seabirds, sea mammals also flock to the islands.
The fur seals of Gough Island have now recovered from the slaughter
of the last century and about 13,000 now breed on the western beaches.
A small breeding colony can be watched only ten minutes walk from
the weather station. Elephant seals - the world's biggest seals
- haunt out on a few of the island beaches and breed in small numbers.
With all those birds, seals, and with unique plants and land animals
Gough Island is a fascinating place for any naturalist.Danger
All this wild life is in danger. It could easily be threatened by unintentional carelessness by man - by you or your companions, for example. The vulnerability cones from the very features that make the island unique - the remoteness and the peculiar assembley of plants and animals the place has acquired. The vegetation has developed in the total absence of grazing: sheep or goats or rabbits would if they were liberated be liable completely to upset its balance and would probably destroy the coastal tussock grasslands create widespread erosion. The seabird fauna and the flightless rail have developed their present numbers in the absence of predatory mammals: if rats, cats, dogs or such like animals become established on Gough as they have on some other southern islands these great bird populations could not survive and some species might wholly extinct. Even the flora is susceptible to damage from "alien" plants brought in by man: weeds of cultivation that might invade the native vegetation and disturb its equilibrium. And insects, and other pests imported from outside could similarly threaten the balance of the natural invertebrate assemblages and diminish the scientific interest of the island. Although it seems improbable in the average Gough downpour, fire at some seasons is also a hazard and one blaze has already damaged acres of tussock grassland. In a dry spell the peaty forest soils could burn. Care is needed to make sure they never do. Already, most of the remote islands if the world have been devastated by man. The four islands of the Tristan-Gough group are now unique in the temperate zones - the only cluster of four temperate oceanic islands anywhere to retain their original flora and fauna substantiately (though not completely) unchanged. It is a matter of international concern among scientists that they stay this way.That is why you are not allowed sheep, or pet cats, or rabbits, or a pet dog on Gough Island. That is why it is essential that special precautions - even if they increase the cost of running the base - are taken to keep rats out. That is why you are asked not to bring in garden seeds and start "pre styling" the place up.
That is why it is worth being careful about fires in dry spells. As it is, you are going to live in a quite unique place: you will never see anywhere else like it. A few acts of carelessness and you could be the last group of people with this privilege. Please take conservation seriously and do your best to keep the island unharmed.
