The Big Trip

We said our goodbyes to Dean and Kerry in the morning and wished them fresh snow as they were staying in Queenstown for a while now with some friends who were about to arrive. Driving south we were soon stuck behind someone who had decided to take their whole house with them on their way out of town. Once we were safely passed it we cruised on toward Invercargill, enjoying the scenery and generally feeling really good having had another awesome two days in Queenstown.

Invercargill looked like a much more industrious place. It was clearly not living the high life of frequent tourist cash injections. It did have its own few attractions though, including a hardware store whose owner knew Burt Munro, a famous character who spent most of his life in and around Invercargill and built The World’s Fastest Indian. Although it may have looked more majestic in a museum like the Britten V1000 in Te Papa, there was a rugged romance to the idea that a hardware store owner with a passion for motorcycles, had collected some very famous ones and - along with some very ordinary examples - displayed them all in his store surrounded by shelves full of hand tools, pressure washers and chainsaw lubricant.

Everyone back with me? If you don’t know anything about Burt or the World’s Fastest Indian, I recommend watching the film of the same name with Sir Anthony Hopkins. It’s well worth a look, even if you're not that bothered about bikes. It was a while ago that I saw it and Hollywood made have bent the truth a bit (yes, unbelievable I know, but sometimes they do).

Invercargill also had a museum where we finally got to see the elusive Tuatara, a lizard like creature that is nicknamed ‘The Living Fossil’ as it’s not changed a bit since it was hanging out with T-Rex and Triceratops. There was a relatively successful breeding program going on at the museum so we got to see some little ones as well. They aren’t the most active of creatures, but it did make taking photos that much easier.

Our next stop was Bluff, about 25km south of Invercargill and not described that favourably by our guide book. We did the touristy thing and drove straight to the yellow sign post with worldwide major cities stuck on it, took some pictures and then wondered what to do next. We had a look out from the top of Bluff Hill, but it was a bit foggy so we couldn’t make out Stewart Island further south. We were planning to stay the night, but discovering that there really isn’t that much to do in Bluff, we decided to head back to Invercargill and stay just south of it at Oreti beach; the hard, flat expanse of sand once a testing ground for Burt’s Indian.

The following morning we set off to the Catlins, a region in the south that is largely untouched and staggeringly beautiful. Our route took us through Fortrose where we stopped to get a picture of the Shipwreck Ino, which turned out to be a few wooden stumps sticking out of the sand at low tide.

We then ventured down to Waipapa Point to see the lighthouse, erected in 1884; three years after the SS Tararua crashed in to the reef and broke up taking 131 lives with it. Along the path to the lighthouse we were startled to walk within two metres of a sleepy sea lion lazing in the tall grass. As we did, three Department of Conservation staff came running up to us to say they were waiting for him to go to sleep so they could mark him with bleach. They retreated back to their hide and we left them to it and had a look around the lighthouse. We bumped in to a man beachcombing with two kids, whose grandfather had operated the lighthouse before it was upgraded. A short history of the area slowly developed in to his life story (luckily it was quite interesting). Following our history lesson we climbed back in the van and continued east along the south coast.

The Catlins is one of the few areas in New Zealand where there were a lot of unsealed roads to navigate. We had been on them before, usually leaving a main road and winding down to a beach or stretch of coast. But in the Catlins there were many roads between towns that were just packed gravel and mud. It made the going a bit tougher and noticeably dirtier in our little camper.

Slope Point is the southern most point of the South Island. Without venturing across to Stewart Island it is as south as you can go in New Zealand. We stopped there next and walked down to the sign which just had two points on it, one for the equator and one for the South Pole. The sea looked immense out to the horizon, but I couldn’t help thinking the point itself needed something to increase its appeal; maybe a pub?

We had picked a nice little camping ground at Curio Bay for the night and on arrival we drove down the winding track, thick flax bushes six feet high either side, to find a sea lion in the middle of the road. The same three DoC staff we had met earlier at the lighthouse were already there trying to mark this one as well. We crept the camper passed and parked up. An hour before dusk, yellow-eyed penguins clambered out of the sea and in to their burrows just two hundred metres from the camping ground. We made it there just in time to catch five or six waddling along the rocky shore and up to the protection of the scrub where they nested.

There was no check out time at the camping ground so after a lazy start we continued the journey east, stopping along the way to tramp in to the forest and take in some of the Catlins great waterfalls. We stopped at Papatowai to see the Lost Gypsy Gallery - a roadside house bus full of art made from everyday things found on the beach or maybe the local rubbish dump - but unfortunately it was closed for winter. There were a few things in front of the bus that could be wound-up or filled with water to start something in crazy mechanical motion, including a corrugated steel whale and a sheep skeleton riding a push-bike.

Our next stop was Nugget Point, where we hoped to see some more yellow-eyed penguins, some fur seals and maybe even blue penguins returning to their burrows after a day at sea. There was also walk out to the Nugget Point Lighthouse, where you could look down at the crashing waves be blown around by the strong south-easterly wind ripping around the point. It was much more dramatic than Slope Point and would be a fitting ‘Land’s End’ for the South Island if only it were a bit further south. Wildlife was everywhere, with seals playing in rock pools down at the shore and birds flying back to their nests from high above the sea. The little blue penguins remained hidden though, so defeated we made our way to Kaka Point where we had the whole camp site to ourselves for the night.