Category Archives: Uncategorised

The Dunedin Line

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Friday 20 March 2026 – Once again, that we were travelling was borne in on us reasonably heavily, as an early alarm was needed to ensure we were up, packed, breakfasted and ready to be collected at 0720 to be taken down the road for an 0800 ferry back to Bluff.  The morning light was, erm, “interesting”,

and didn’t seem to be sending out omens for a good day.  However, it became clear that whatever weather was causing this light was moving away from us, as we had a calm crosing back to Bluff and sunshine for the rest of the day.  Our destination was Dunedin, 228km away, a journey which could be done in under three hours. Of course, Jane had other ideas and had found some diversions along the way, so we drove largely along the coast for about 300 kilometres and spent the whole day on the journey. A large part of the day was spent investigating sights in the Catlins, a very scenic and occasionally rugged bit of south east New Zealand.

We needed to get some fuel for the car, and Jane had noted that there was a fuel station and café at Fortrose, so we stopped at the Fortrose café and restaurant.  The initial indications were not particularly hopeful; these were the fuel pumps.

They strenuously resisted all of our candidate credit cards, so we decided that we could just get a quick coffee and find fuel elsewhere. The café seemed pretty rustic inside, but the coffee was good and the lady serving us, hearing of our lack of refuelling success, offered an arrangement whereby she used her card to cajole petrol out of the pump and we paid her back in the café. Presumably not the first time she has done this for a punter, and excellent service to go with the great coffee (yes, and scones).

Both vehicle and inner persons refuelled, we carried on,

and it was clear that we had re-entered logging country.

The part of the south coast we were driving passed the southernmost point of the South Island, Slope Point, so obviously we had to call in there. It’s a slightly strange location, with very clear indications as to which direction the prevailing wind blows in (though the conditions for us were calm).

The actual southernmost point

is not reachable by car; one has to park up by a rather ritzy visitor info centre

and cutely decorated loo.

Thence it’s about 500 metres, past a nice view or two

to Slope Point itself, where there’s a navigation aid of some sort

presumably to keep ships off the rather prominent rocks there. This is the selfie spot. We don’t do selfies, but we had to acknowledge where we were, so this is our compromise.

We may be at the southernmost point of the South Island, but, at 46° 40′ 40″ it’s not that far south.  By comparison, leafy Surrey in the UK is 51° north of the equator, so we’re closer to the tropics here than we are at home.

Our next stop took us from one curio, the southernmost point, to another – Curio Bay. This is home to a petrified forest, something I’m sure I’ve never seen before, though Jane swears I have. This is what a petrified forest looks like from above.

I’m glad there was an info board to show us the main features, otherwise I might have dismissed this as being rather dull. But the info board allowed me to see that there were some tree trunks lying down

so I hope that helps make sense of the aerial view. Looking closely at these trunks, one can clearly see evidence of a wood grain, which is fascinating within a stone structure like this.

Scouting further, one can find tree stumps;

in fact the whole area is littered with them – they’re the knobbly bits sticking up from the base rock.

The forest is some 180 million years old, give or take a year or two. The now petrified logs and tree stumps, from ancient conifers closely related to modern kauri and Norfolk pine, were buried by ancient volcanic mud flows and gradually replaced by silica to produce the fossils now exposed by the sea. The actual area of this forest stretches all the way back to Slope Point. Known fossil forests of this age are very few throughout the world, and this is one of the most extensive and least disturbed of them. They’ve put up a visitor centre, café and gift shop, mind.

Onwards, then: next stop Niagara Falls.

No, really; the falls are called Niagara Falls, although,

in truth they’re not that impressive. According to an info board, they were given the name by a surveyor with a sense of humour, and good for him, I say. The river there is actually the site of a couple of whitebaiting platforms.

Until researching this phenomenon, I hadn’t realised that “Whitebait” means very different things in different countries. Whitebait in New Zealand means something entirely different from what we’re used to in the UK. In the United Kingdom today, whitebait principally refers to young sprats, most commonly herring. In New Zealand, it means the juveniles of five galaxiid species which live as adults in freshwater rivers and streams. Four of these five species have been classified by the Department of Conservation as endangered, so the fishing of them is carefully controlled.

I was amused to notice, as we left the Falls, that precautions had been taken to remind any visiting Americans, who might have been taken in by the name, to take care as they drove on.

From Niagara Falls, we went to Koropuku Falls. We weren’t sure what to expect, but set off on the forest track that would lead us to them.

The track, rather nicely laid using lengths of tree fern trunks to make it passable even though it was very damp, eventually led to

an end point where there were no waterfalls, so it was a pleasant enough bush walk, but nothing that would have pulse of an Icelander racing. In researching the falls for this post, I found an entry in atlasobscura.com which rhapsodises thus:

“The Catlins region has a bounty of breathtaking waterfalls, the best is arguably Koropuku Falls— a majestic waterfall with an enchanting bush walk.”

Hmmmm…not our experience.

If you read to the end of the post, it finishes by saying

“Like most smaller waterfalls, the density of the drop depends on recent rain activity.” Other sites also are breathless in their adoration: “a true hidden gem“, “a captivating waterfall” and so forth. So our timing was a bit off, I suppose.  Visit only after rainfall if you want to see the falls as pictured on these sites.

We had hoped to visit the Cathedral Caves on our drive today, but time was not on our side. The caves can only be accessed at lowish tide, and that was earlier in the day – we knew this because its website gives clear times for access each day. We also wondered how the access would be managed, given that tide times change each and every day, and were rather impressed to see that it is managed handraulically.

We moved on, therefore, towards the next Thing To See, through countryside which showed less and less evidence of logging activity.

We had a brief stop-off at a heritage railway tunnel, the world’s southernmost railway tunnel, which was an amusing diversion, but, frankly, photographically somewhat challenging. Photo Nerdery alert: the phone does a better job than the Nikon of giving an impression of the tunnel

Phone
Nikon

Using someone else’s phone as a torch helps

One can clearly see the construction of the tunnel, which was dug in the 1890s using only picks and shovels – that must have been back-breaking labour! – and built with stone and hand-made local bricks.

The penultimate stop on this very peripatetic route was at Nugget Point. It’s named after the Nugget Rocks, and there’s a lighthouse there to keep ships away from them.

It’s a windy road to get there

and a somewhat up-and-down walk from the car park to reach the Point itself.

The Nugget Rocks make an impressive sight

and I was struck by the rock mid-right in the photo above, which appears to have a hole in it.  And indeed it does – waves wash up and travel right through it.

One wonders how on earth that happened.

Our final stop was at Sod Cottage, near Clutha.

This is a heavily-restored heritage site. Originally built in 1862, it was used as a dwelling, store and bar, servicing the travellers making their way to central Otago, probably seeking to mine gold there. It was later used as a school room. It fell into disrepair and was saved from total ruin, starting in 1970, and restored to what we can see today. The walls are two feet (60cm) thick and made of moistened clay. The interior is not accessible, but one can squeeze in through the (unlocked) front door and peek in through the mesh guarding the interior, which is dressed in period furniture and accoutrements.

So it was 6pm when we arrived in Dunedin, having been on the road since 9am – an absorbing nine hours spent viewing a wide variety of different sights and crossing the Catlins.

We had just the one day in Dunedin and we used it well; much to tell in the next post!

 

An Aspiring Day

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Sunday 15 March 2026 – You can do all sorts of things from Wānaka – boat tours on the lake, rafting, helicopter flights, waterfall cable climbs, sky diving, paragliding. It seems such a nice town, yet everything seems to be geared towards getting you out of it. Anyway, another option is to find a trail and go walking. So, with a day on our hands, that’s what we decided to do. Obviously.

Caroline looked us over and said that we looked like the hiking types (appearances can be so deceptive), so why didn’t we try the Rob Roy Glacier trail? We took a look at it: 472m gain in 5km, according to AllTrails, is a little on the daunting side, but we decided we’d give it a go. It’s not local to Wānaka; it’s a 50km drive into the Mount Aspiring National Park, and some 30km of that is along a dirt road.

As we left Wānaka, the extent and scope of the A&P show was somewhat borne in on us, even though they were breaking down and clearing up.

Soon we could see the snow-capped mountains in the distance

and eventually hit the dirt road.

The scenery, as you’d expect from heading into the mountains, was dramatic

and so were the driving conditions, occasionally.

The sheep were loose, but there were also herds of deer behind fences, presumably being farmed. We got to the car park to find, to our total lack of surprise, that on a sunny Sunday, lots of other people had had the same idea as us.

We managed to find a space that didn’t seem too obstructive (later, we found that people had strewn cars all along the road, so we needn’t have worried about being tidy after all). A quick visit to the loo there and off we went,

past a rather handsome sculpture of a raptor of some description.

(It’s got a rather Simpsons-narrow-eyed expression, don’t you think?). The path starts off not completely level but at least “Inca flat” – ending at the same altitude it started – beside the Matukituki river

before one crosses the suspension bridge and the path starts to climb.

It’s largely through forest, which means that the bloody trees get in the way of the view

but occasionally they clear to give one a decent view.

Most of the trail is fine, if a little rocky, but there are some interesting moments as you climb.

and then you get to some steps – 126 of them in total.

These are relatively recent additions, to bypass damage that had rendered the trail impassable, so I suppose I’ll let them off. Shortly after the steps, you reach the Lower Lookout, where there are benches and an opportunity to rest and get some idea of what awaits those who carry on to the Upper Lookout.

From the signs and the AllTrails track profile, I was expecting this last kilometre to be rather tougher than what we’d already climbed, but basically it wasn’t. There were a couple of spots where the track became what Ian Burley would describe as “technical” and which I would call “bloody tricky and a bit nerve-racking”.

but we negotiated them without injury and carried on, past a couple of decent views

to

the end of the trail – unofficial  caption: “Thank Christ for that!”. Apart from the sheer satisfaction of having grunted one’s way up there, it’s a great place to get to. For a start, you can sit down and have your lunch,

and read the various info boards about the history of the place, which completely fail to answer the one obvious question that must occur to everyone as they heave themselves up the trail: why the actual is it called the “Rob Roy Glacier Trail”? What has a Scottish outlaw from the 17th Century got to do with an ice field in New Zealand? The glacier is named after the mountain, Rob Roy Peak; the naming of the mountain is usually attributed to one Charlie Douglas, a late 19th-century explorer with strong Scottish connections. There seem to be many Scottish aspects to this region of New Zealand, and this is a classic example.

Anyway….the view is fantastic.

It’s of course very difficult to do justice to photographically; I also tried a bit of video from this lookout and a point slightly below it.

I hope you get the idea.

Having lunched, of course, we had to face the inevitability of getting back down again; down can be so much harder than up.  Actually, it was OK, with a couple of decent views as we went,

but we were glad to see the suspension bridge and the car park again.

Unsurprisingly, there were far fewer vehicles there when we got back to our car.

According to my Garmin, the trail was 11km, and I expended 1300 calories in 16,000 steps. This makes it half a Tongariro, without the utter fucking brutality of That Descent, so we felt pretty good having completed today’s hike in just four and a half hours..

The journey back to our accommodation was as scenic as the journey out,

and we spent the rest of the evening resting.

This was our only full day in Wānaka – the morrow would see us moving on to parts new and even further south on our journey to the bottom of the South Island, via a couple of potentially interesting places – stay tuned to find out which.

 

 

 

 

More Moeraki

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Thursday 12 March 2026 – We didn’t fancy kayaking or paying to join the organised hike from the Lodge, but we had time on our hands, and felt we should go for a walk. Obviously. Showers were (accurately) forecast for the morning, but later on in the day we embarked on a walk to Monro Beach, some 3km to the north of the Lodge and reached along a public path. This is a rainforest walk, through some more rainforesty rainforest. The path starts out quite wide,

crosses a suspension bridge

View from the suspension bridge

and then becomes rather narrower as it wends its way through the forest.

There are some impressively tall trees

but apart from that, it’s just this rainforest path, you know?

It’s pleasant to be out and walking in all that greenery, but frankly, once you’ve seen one rainforest, unless you’re rather better versed than I am in the lore of the rainforest, you’ve seen ’em all, so there was little to remark upon. We reached the beach

and Jane started scouting around to try to find some greenstone. It’s a stony beach so there’s plenty of scope for fossicking. I’m not hugely into that, so I took some photos of the environs. There are some moderately dramatic rocks out to sea

and a colourful jumble of them on land

and it seems that the beach is not unpopular as a walking destination;

possibly because the weather had cheered up since the morning there were a few couples walking the path at the same time as us.

We got back to the Lodge with time for a Nice Cup Of (Twinings finest Earl Grey) Tea before going out on the Lodge’s daily 5pm pre-drinkies walk. This time we were guided by Kirsten, who took us along a path to the lake, via a few notable plants and trees. Fringing the Lodge’s grounds are some very old trees

and Kirsten showed us a few more as we walked the short distance to the lake shore.

As before, fantails and tomtits accompanied us at times, seeking the insects we disturbed. I only had the little Sony camera with me, but managed to capture this shot of a tomtit.

I’m not sure whether the bird is feeling sad or is simply fed up that we haven’t disturbed more insects for it.

Kirsten showed us a couple of locations that could possibly come into their own after dark: one was a Lemonwood tree, which is a favoured perching spot of Morepork owls; and the other was the bole of a fallen tree which is known to harbour glow worms. So, after (another very fine) dinner, we pottered out with torches to see what we could see. Not, sadly, owls; but we found our way back to the glow worm tree and

there they were! Since we were not pressed for time, we experimented a bit with photography of this tricky subject. The photo above was simply captured using Night Mode on a Samsung phone, but I had the Nikon with me and had a go with that, too.

Not a huge difference, to be honest. We tried with a little bit of light

which give a slightly better idea, although the light does overwhelm the glow from the worms; and one with a little less light,

where, if you use your imagination, you might be able to see a little bit of the tree (lower left) as well as the glows. Finally, before we left the poor things in peace, we used the torch to illuminate one;

you can see the sticky threads it has exuded to trap insects attracted by its glow.

That was it for the day, so we retired to sleep the sleep of the just been out for a walk, wondering how much of the following day would be usable for touristing, because the weather forecast was pretty dire.

Friday 13 March 2026 – Forecast:

Reality:

We were, then, reasonably confident that the morning was a write off. However, it was (a) nice to bunk off and take things easy from relentless touristing and (b) a good opportunity to catch up with the laundry, as These Things Are Important, You Know.

However, the forecast was for the day to improve and the rain duly stopped, so, having exhausted all the hikes near the Lodge, we didn’t go for a walk. Obviously. We took up on a slightly left-field recommendation from Donovan, one of the serving staff at the Lodge, and headed out towards Jackson Bay. There’s nothing there apart from a famous fish and chip shop and it would be too late for lunch by the time we got there and anyway we’re eating too much as it is; but we thought it might make a nice excursion – it’s about 65km south of the Lodge.

The route takes one near the small township of Haast which features a petrol station and a coffee shop called the Striker Cafe.

This was only open until 2.30pm and we got there only just in time for a coffee. So we also treated ourselves to cake, which was lovely but which we might, of course, come to regret: “sin in Haast, repent at leisure”. Then we carried on along the coast road to Jackson Bay, which led past some pretty varied scenery.

One stretch of arrow-straight road led through rainforest, which felt distinctly weird.

One thing Jane had spotted en route was a Pioneers Cemetery, so we stopped off to take a look.

Several graves were dotted throughout the woodland, some with headstones, many without.

It was a sight to cause mixed emotions: sadness because it seems a rather lonely and neglected site; but a certain warmth that the contribution of the pioneers to the generation of the area is recognised via a heritage location.

So: Jackson Bay, then. Indeed a small place. It has a wharf, from which Jane hoped to see perhaps penguins or maybe dolphins but didn’t.

The wharf is perhaps not being best maintained.

it has a handful of buildings,

chief among which is The Craypot, the fish’n’chips place recommended by Donovan.

It may not look much, but it seems like it’s a destination restaurant; lots of locals we talked to knew about it. Outside the Craypot is a rather fetching installation featuring many, many abalone shells (the locals call them pāua).

Jane had a quick chat with the owner, who said that he and his family had eaten all of the shells’ inhabitants over the years, having fished for them where they used to live further south. Abalone fishing is currently forbidden in Jackson Bay in order for the population to regenerate; the sustainability of fishing generally is taken quite seriously,

but I take issue with some of their guidelines.

I can’t even run at 9kph for any distance at all, far less walk at that speed.

The road from Haast to Jackson Bay features a few speed restrictions for roadworks, and it’s clear that rockfalls have been a problem.

Also, some of the scenery is markedly different from the rainforest flora we’d seen thus far in these parts.

On the way back to the Lodge, we made a couple of stops in the hope that there was some more scenery to take in. The first was also so that I could indulge in schoolboy giggles.

Actually, this site was a pleasant stop, apart from sandflies, which were occasionally a bit of a nuisance. There’s a lake there, Dune Lake, which we could have walked around had not evening drinks back at the Lodge been making their siren call, but we walked a little of it

to a viewpoint, which has a great outlook on more of that unfamiliar vegetation we’d seen earlier.

There’s also a small marine reserve, Tauparikaka Marine reserve, which is an attractive setting.

The other stopping place was Knight’s Point Lookout, which offers, I suppose, a decent enough view

but has a surprisingly large car park for what it offers, with multiple bus parking and camper van slots. I guess the presence of public toilets might have something to do with it, because it’s otherwise just this decent view.

Back at the Lodge, we had our final, again very fine, dinner as the sun (which by now had made an appearance) set over the excellent view from the dining room.

These will be our final images from the Wilderness Lodge at Lake Moeraki. Tomorrow, we move on, again further south, and the pace of events picks up somewhat – no more three-night stays as we make our way down to and round the south coast. We have just over a week left in this lovely country and, we hope, lots more to see and enjoy, so stay with us for the rest of the trip, won’t you?