So, a little bit about Milford sound and fiordland... It's on the west coast of the south island and is home to 13 fjords and a bloody big temporate rain forest. Milford is the most northerly of all the sounds/fjords. It's the steepest of all the sounds. The Maoris say the demi-god, Tute Rakiwhanoa, carved out the steep sided valleys with his adzes (don't ask me what one of those is though!). He started at the bottom of the south island and carved out the sound, but he wasn't happy and carried on up the coast, creating all these sounds and moving on when he still wasn't satisfied. As he worked his way up the coast from south to north his hand improved steadily, and Milford Sound, his final work, was also his masterpiece. The goddess Hinenui-te-Po is held responsible for releasing sandflies (tiny, bloody irritating biting flies - there are millions of them all along the west coast of the south island) into Milford Sound, to prevent human kind from lingering too long in such a beautiful place.
Milford Sound was known to the Maori, who named it Piopiotahi - the single piopio the name of an extinct bird.
Captain Cook who did a lot of discoveries and map making round nz missed it completely when he sailed past the entrance several times, this is because the entrance is at an angle to the sea so you have to get pretty close to it to notice the entry. It was discovered by a bloke called john Grono, a fur sealer who hoped to find a bit of shelter in the area during a particularly bad storm. He origionally named the place Milford Haven, after his hometown in Wales, but then it was changed to Milford Sound to fit in with the other sounds in the area.
Technically, Milford has been misnamed. It should be called Milford fjord rather than sound. The difference being that a true fjord was carved out by glaciers and flooded by the sea. A sound has been carved out by rivers and flooded by the sea, but the early explorers didn't know that I guess so all the fjords on the west coast are named sounds. New Zealand did try to rectify this by naming the area they all live in 'fiordland' however, they got that wrong too as they misspelt it.
The first European to settle in Milford was a hermit called donald Sutherland. He lived in Milford with his dog and showed people round the sound in his little rowing boat. He branched his business out when he got married and his wife could help run the Milford hotel, and once the Milford track (a 4 day tramp from lake te anau to Milford sound) was finished, he had a steady stream of visitors. Bit different from today, people had to do a 4 day hike to get there and then row the boat - Donald did none of the rowing, the guests did that! He just navigated them and pointed out mountains, gulleys and waterfalls he'd named during his time there. Nowadays, Milford sound is the only one accessible from the road, and this was only done in the 1950/60s by blasting a hole through a bloody great mountain, creating the Homer Tunnel.
The most famous of the mountains is called mitre peak, so called because the top third resembles the shape of a bishops mitre. The Maoris have a different name for it, Ive forgotten the Maori name, but roughly translated it means 'member of upstanding masculinity'... Make of that what you will... The Maoris found Milford looking for their ponamu (greenstone) and there are still great boulders of the stuff on the shores of done of the bays.
So, all this sheer rock carved out is home to a rainforest. And the rainforst grows up these sheer cliff faces. A rainforest has 4 layers to it, the first being lychens that stick to the rock, providing a glue for the moss that comes next. Moss can hold up to 25x it's own weight in water which is pretty important as there's no soil. Next grown the ferns and flaxes and small shrubs, then finally come the trees. These hold onto the side of the mountains by jamming their roots into little cracks in the rock and generally entwining with all the othet root systems growing there.
Every so often, usually during a big storm, a tree might give up holding onto the rock. It falls down, but due to all the intertwined root systems of the trees on the mountainside, it drags al the other trees in it's path with it in what's called a tree avalanche. If you go anywhere in fiordland you'll see all these scars on the cliff faces from tree avalanches that have happened in the past. It takes about 90 years for the full rainforest process to grow back to maturity, which is pretty quick!
Milford has very deep (over 300m) and calm waters, this is because the terminal moraine of the glacier (where the glacier has stopped, depositing all the rocks and boulders it picked up along the way) has created a barrier for the currents from the Tasman sea. Because of this and all the rainwater that milford gets (usually between 7-9 metres per year), there is pretty much a constant layer of fresh water lying on top of the salt water underneath. This fresh water layer can be metres thick, because of all the rain. The fresh water has run off the mountain sides, being coloured on the way from all the tannins in the plants, giving it a greeny colour. This also blocks a lot of light getting to the sea water undeneath. This cons a lot of marine life into thinking that it's at a lower depth than it actually is so a lot of coral grows only a few metres under the surface there, when normally it's found really deep in the oceans - pretty cool.
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