Lighthouses, Bays, Tunnels but no Sealife

Monday 23 June

A day of blue skies and fabulous windswept cloudscapes as we headed out to explore this eastern end of the Catlins.

Driving round the coast from Kaka Point we aimed first for Nugget Point Lighthouse to visit the 1869 landmark. Originally destined for Cape Saunders on the Otago Peninsula, the lamp for this outpost was redirected to Tokāta/Nugget Point to ensure the safety of shipping around the mouth of the busy Clutha river, a few kilometres away at the end of Molyneux Bay. The oil burner lamp first started operating in 1870, was replaced by an electric lamp powered by a diesel generator in 1949 until 1960 when it was connected to the National Grid and in 2020 solar power took over.

The walk out along the peninsula is just under 1kilometre along a rather narrow track hugging the steep cliffs. In places you pass under tree arches formed by the windswept bushes and trees which cling to the escarpment like a bad upswept combover! We got the giggles at one point where a sign warned visitors not to climb above the official track because of the danger of rock falls - and sitting right by it were a pair of rather indignant looking Billy Goats Gruff!

There were narrow sections with a sheer rock cliff up to your right and an equally sheer drop down to the rocks and the ocean below on your left - I was glad we visited now, out of the tourist season as it could be quite precarious in high season! We heard a seal calling on the rocks below and could just make out its dark form, but it seemed to be alone.

Out by the lighthouse on the viewing platform overlooking the ocean and the Nuggets we swapped camera duties with the only other visitors - three Asian tourists - then spent a while just watching the churn of the ocean to the south, compared with the calm of the seas to the north, in the lee of the peninsula - it was quite fascinating.

Driving back towards Kaka Point we pulled in at Roaring Bay for a quick look - there is a hide there to watch the hoiho, the yellow eyed penguins, at dawn and dusk, but as it was midday we enjoyed the view of the almost circular bay and moved on... no sign of any kekeno (fur seals) or pakake (sea lions) either.

On all the tracks on the peninsula - out to the lighthouse and down to the bay) are wonderful engraved stone plaques with information about the place and the local wildlife. Some were a little hard to read with overnight dew and rain splatters, but the information was fascinating, multi cultural, bilingual and often very poetic.

From here we headed back inland to Owaka, pausing to explore Tunnel Hill, and the southernmost railway tunnel in the world, built in 1896 and decommissioned in 1971, stretching 250m under the hill above.

Owaka was very much a holiday town out of season - most of the amenities were closed though Louis did get a coffee from the "local cafe" Tahatika Coffee Traders and a cheese scone from the "outsiders cafe" Catlins Cafe over the road. It seems like the cafe may have been taken over fairly recently (rather like the Whistling Frog along the road) and the locals do not appear to have accepted the new ownership into the fold...

We also spent a while at the Catlins Country Store which was vast and stocked a huge array of goods for the passing tourists - but best of all the barn out the back was stuffed with dusty old antique pieces from the region, relics of a bygone age of hand saws, mangles, horse drawn farming, coal fired cookers and bizarrely, a diadem created from human hair!

Our final excursion was ostensibly to Surat Bay - we parked at New Haven by the campsite which had closed for winter and tried to follow the track to Surat Bay but as it was high tide we got diverted inland from the estuary and the dunes and found ourselves ducking & diving along an overgrown woodland path which eventually petered out so we limboed our way back and decided to check the tides before visiting again 😳

After lunch and a siesta back at Banjo, Louis did some work and I took a dusky walk from the campsite down to Molyneux Bay, on the otherside of Kaka Point - it was grey and cloudy so no photos of the bay, but I did like the metal sculpture outside one of the houses along the way - a surfing tin man pulling a railway engine... as you do!

Dinner in the camp kitchen again - baked lemony chicken drumsticks & veggies - good & warming! I thought I had spotted a third grey cat in the campground, chowing down on the catfood that the custodian had left outside the office - turned out to be a very well fed and not very nervous fat possum!!!