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
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!
