Days 37–38: The Catlins
Mainly waterfalls and lighthouses
Our journey down through the South Island had to come to a dead-end eventually — the van isn’t amphibious, unfortunately — and it did so at the Catlins.
We had plenty to fit in, and despite the weather not being quite to our liking, we still made the most of it. Fortunately, most of the rain came during the night so although the days were still a bit cold and dreary, at least we were dry.
From our post-Milford Sound campsite in Lumsden, we didn’t head straight to the Catlins. Instead, we went via Invercargill — the main point of civilisation that far south — to catch up on a few chores that can only be done where they have supermarkets and petrol stations.
The majority of Scottish settlers ended up settling in the South Island and it certainly shows with place names such as Invercargill, Dunedin, Wallacetown, St. Andrews, etc.
Part of our brief stopover in Invercargill involved a trip to McDonald’s to charge our laptops, use the WiFi, write blogs, etc. While we were in there we actually saw a group of teenage boys all wearing kilts!
Also in that McDonald’s, we bumped into a woman we met all the way back up in Cape Reinga — the northernmost part of New Zealand. We originally met her and her boyfriend when we went sandboarding on the sand dunes up there. It was a massive coincidence meeting her again at the complete opposite end of the country, particularly as I had found one of the notes on my phone that morning reminding me to send her boyfriend a video I’d taken of them both on my GoPro. I had every intention of sending it across but had completely forgotten until that morning. I had also forgotten once again by the time we were in McDonald’s so I guess the universe sent her along to give me the nudge I needed.
Once we were done in Macca’s, we set off to the Catlins to see some of the sights while we still had some daylight left. First up was Waipapa Point.
We weren’t lucky enough to see any seals there, but we did check out the lighthouse.
It wasn’t the most impressive lighthouse we’ve seen, but the area as a whole did strangely remind me of being back in Devon. The rolling hills, the coast, and the typically English weather all combined to give a sense of the coast in Torbay. Maybe Berry Head with the lighthouse there.
One thing that Waipapa Point had that Devon doesn’t — or at least didn’t the last time I was there well over a year ago! — was this weird substitute for grass…
I’m not really sure what it was but it looked cool seeing it everywhere.
After Waipapa Point, we moved further along the coast to Slope Point. Just as Cape Reinga is the John o’ Groats of New Zealand, Slope Point is the equivalent of Land’s End — I am ignoring Stewart Island here which is off the coast of New Zealand and further south than Slope Point.
Unlike Land’s End, not much of a fuss is made of Slope Point.
They have planted a signpost to give visitors to the empty cliff edge something to take a photo of, but other than that, it’s mostly just more rugged coastline.
Our final stop for the evening was Curio Bay. Our campsite was near there, but we first went up to the headland. Again, we weren’t lucky enough to see any seals or penguins but we did get to see more coastline.
Other than the chance of seeing some penguins, the main reason for visiting Curio Bay is to go to the petrified forest.
A petrified forest is the remnants of a forest where all of the trees literally turned to stone after dying. It takes a very long time to happen, but if the conditions are right — i.e. a lack of oxygen so that the wood can’t decompose — then water laden with minerals gets absorbed by the trees and the minerals eventually replace the wood. What’s left is a rock made up of those minerals that looks exactly like the tree did. It’s kind of like making a cast of something.
The forest at Curio Bay is right on the shoreline and the “trees” are all lying down in the water so they can be hard to spot. When you do see them, it’s a strange sight because they do look just like woody trees, but they’re actually made from rock.
Curio Bay is also home to the rarest penguin species in the world: the Yellow-Eyed Penguin. They were going through their moulting season while we were there which meant they were hidden away in underground nests in the bushes so we couldn’t see them. There was one that hadn’t started moulting yet that they were expecting to come back from hunting later on in the evening, but we really didn’t want to wait around in the cold for hours on end so we passed on that one.
We still had plenty more of the Catlins to see the next day so we were lucky that the overnight rain had stopped by the morning. First up was McLean Falls.
Unfortunately, quite a few of my photos here turned out to be blurry but at least some of them were half decent. As far as waterfalls go, it was up there with some of the best that we’ve seen in New Zealand.
We got very lucky with our next destination. It was only possible to visit it at low tide and we had no idea when that would be because we’d had no signal since leaving Invercargill the day before. As it turned out, we arrived just half an hour before low tide which was pretty much the perfect time to go and see the Cathedral Caves — not to be confused with Cathedral Cove in the North Island.
The cave had two entrances that met at the back so you could go in one and out the other.
It was an impressive cave and it wasn’t short of visitors as people were coming and going all the time.
It cost us $5 each because we had to cross private land to get to the beach, but it was well worth it.
Moving on, we went to our second waterfall of the day: Purakaunui Falls.
Again, probably one of the cooler waterfalls we’ve seen in New Zealand. It was quite quiet too which was nice.
We saw a beast of a beetle on the path to the waterfall as well as a hollow tree that I made Anna get in for a photo.
En-route to our last spot of the day, we had to do a U-turn so that Anna could worship at her equivalent of Mount Olympus. Instead of Zeus, she was paying homage to the God she values above all others: the Tea God.
With that brief ceremony out of the way, we continued on to Nugget Point, so called because the rocks off of the headland reminded people of gold nuggets.
I can’t say that I know exactly what gold nuggets are supposed to look like, but the rocks definitely made for an amazing backdrop.
The combination of “The Nuggets” in the water, the sheer cliffs down to the beaches, the lighthouse sitting on top, and the strong winds and waves pounding the headland gave the whole place a very atmospheric feel.
To top it all off, we could see seals lounging about down on the rocks.
It was a great way to end a busy day, and from there, we left the Catlins altogether and drove up to Dunedin — and back into civilisation — to spend the night.
