The Noises are a collection of islands lying northeast of Rakino Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, off the coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The largest and most forested islands are Ōtata and Motuhoropapa; Orarapa and Maria/Ruapuke are also significant. After a rat eradication campaign in the 1960s, Maria was the first New Zealand island to become predator-free. The lack of invasive predators, intact native forest, and large numbers of breeding seabirds give the Noises significant conservation value. There has however been a marked decline in marine biodiversity surrounding the islands from over-fishing.
Geography
The Noises consist of a number of small islands and stacks in the inner Hauraki Gulf, a few kilometres north-east of Rakino Island and north of Waiheke Island. They are about 24 km northeast of Auckland, and are visible from the Auckland–Waiheke ferry. The three largest islands are Ōtata (15 ha, 67 m in height), which is 700 m away from Motuhoropapa, (9.5 ha, 50 m), and Maria, also known as Ruapuke (2.0 ha).
There are five small islets and several rock stacks: Orarapa Island (or the Haystack), a small isolated stack 1.1 km south-west of Motuhoropapa; Sunday and Scott Islands, two islets on the north-western side of Ōtata; David Rocks (also known as the Four Islands), itself made of five islets, four of which are joined at low tide, 1.8 km east of Ōtata; Ike Island and Tern Rock, north of Motuhoropapa; Tākapu Rock; and Zeno Rock.
The islands are composed of complexly folded Jurassic greywackes and argillites, with rocky indented shorelines and wave-cut platforms that expose up to 25 m of rock at low tide. There are no permanent streams or other fresh water. The islands are surrounded by sheltered, shallow rocky reefs, with muddy or sandy seafloor in deeper areas.
Approximately 18,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum when sea levels were over 100 metres lower than present day levels, the Noises were hilly features which were surrounded by a vast coastal plain where the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana exists today. Sea levels began to rise 7,000 years ago, after which the Noises became islands separated from the rest of New Zealand.
Name
In one theory, albeit never proved, French explorer Dumont D'Urville came across the islands in 1827 and named them Les Noisettes ("The Hazelnuts"), which, later corrupted to "the Noisies" or "the Noises", is the likely origin of the islands' English name. Local Māori refer to the Hauraki islands as the Ngā Pōito o Te Kupenga O Taramainuku (the floats of the net of Taramainuku). Taramainuku is a star, the captain of the waka in the constellation Te Waka-o-Rangi, next to Matariki. Taramainuku casts his net or kupenga every night to gather the souls of the deceased.
Ownership
The Noises were visited and inhabited by Māori from several iwi over the centuries, who collected seafood and seabirds such as grey-faced petrels. A midden on Ōtata is only the second archaeological site in the Auckland region with evidence of occupation before the eruption of Rangitoto about 600 years ago.
One owner, J. J. Craig, built a cottage on the south-east corner of Ōtata Island, and sold the Noises to a Captain McKenzie in 1930. Captain Frederic Stanley Wainhouse, deputy harbour master for Auckland Harbour Board, purchased the island group from him in 1933 for £200. Wainhouse remarried in 1940 to Margaret Neureuter, and from 1942 the Wainhouses spent a significant portion of their lives living on the islands, keeping chickens and brewing their own beer. Fred Wainhouse died on Ōtata Island in 1957, and his widow passed on ownership of the islands that year to her nephew Brian P. Neureuter, who in turn passed it on to his son. When Brian and Marlene Neureuter died, their ashes were scattered on the island. In 1995 the Neureuter family formed the Noises Trust, to which they gifted the islands.
There are only three structures on the Noises: the Neureuter family bach on Ōtata; a hut on Motuhoropapa built by the Wildlife Service around 1977 during a study of the island's Norway rats, restored by the University of Auckland in 2014; and a navigation light installed on Maria Island in 1953.
Flora
The Noises have never been cleared or farmed, and so retain some of the highest-quality native vegetation of the inner Hauraki Gulf islands. Their lack of invasive mammals and low weed numbers make them important from a conservation point of view, and they are a seed source for regeneration projects on other islands.