The Traills of Stewart Island

On the island of Rousay [in the Orkneys] there were interpretation boards about the Traill family: unjust Victorian lairds, imperial military adventurers, emigrants. Among the family's many destinations was New Zealand. In 1900 one of the furthest travelled of the Traills, Charles, finished up in Stewart Island/Rakiura, at the opposite extremity of the British imperial world, after trying his luck in the Californian gold fields and in Australia. He must have been another isle-o-phile, having travelled the span of the globe to make his home on another island, off an island, off a continent.

His half-brother Walter, who grew up on the Fife coast, retired to join him there after a life at sea catching seals. Another Orkney islander, Arthur Traill, was the local schoolteacher and Justice of the Peace.

Some years later E. and I made it together to Stewart Island, following an eighteen-month journey, by motor cycle, that began in Orkney. The resonances in the landscape between the northern and southern extremities of our journey were profound. As we sailed south from the ferry port of Bluff, albatrosses swooped over the waves around the ferry. There was a park there named for the Traills, in the settlement called Oban.

Like that albatross in Unst, it felt as if the Traills were in search not just of an island to call home, but an island climate brutal enough for their comfort; the names of the settlements reflected not only Orcadian influence, but that of Shetlanders. 

- Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession, Edinburgh, 2020

See also:

Blog: The influence of Chinese sage Lao Tzu on Scottish League One football, 11 December 2014

Blog: The character and attachments of a Scotchman, 3 November 2012

Blog: Campbell Island & the transit of Venus, 25 July 2011