Tales from The Catlins
The bottom of the South Island is exceptionally beautiful, but you’ll be equally bowled over by the legendary stories that crop up at every place you stop, writes Michael Lam.
You’ll feel your telomeres lengthening as you head south from Dunedin towards the remote southeast coast of New Zealand. Clocks hit reverse. No more shops for miles.
This is The Catlins, awash with dramatic vistas, precious wildlife and historical characters and curiosities.
The first character you’ll encounter, at least in spirit, is Edward Cattlin himself (nobody knows where the extra ‘‘t’’ went, probably up an old logging track).
Cattlin was a whaler who ‘‘bought’’ the area, a trifling 5.5 million acres (2,225,771 hectares), for £30 in 1840. Apparently one of the five Ma¯ori chiefs he did the deal with signed the document with a drawing of his face tattoo.
Also signing was Kai Tahu chief Ho¯ne Tu¯hawaiki, nicknamed Bloody Jack because he liked to emulate the salty language of the whalers, and Chief Karetai, known as Jacky White.
The sale looked destined to sour when the New South Wales borders were extended to include New Zealand, and dodgy land deals between whalers and Ma¯ori were being rescinded.
Cattlin persuaded Bloody Jack and Jacky White to shoot over to Sydney to convince the New South Wales governor, Sir George Gipps, that the deal was fair. Gipps, realising that the chiefs had been put up to it by Cattlin, was having none of it.
True to his name, Bloody Jack apparently summed up the rebuff by saying, ‘‘that governor no bloody good!’’ They didn’t take all Cattlin’s land. He ended up with 227 acres (92 hectares), but maybe the stress got to him because by 1856 he was dead.
Kaka Point is the next spirit you’re likely to encounter, as it’s home to the great Ma¯ori poet Ho¯ne Tuwhare.
Tuwhare spent the last 16 years of his life at the point, in a one-bedroom crib, which he called his ‘‘humble bloody abode’’ (Bloody Jack would approve). The crib has been restored by his son Rob, but it’s still humble. Kaka Point has everything a poet needs, the good Catlins stuff, like moody seas and endless brooding skies.
Nugget Point is a postcard highlight, where the seals laze and the fingers of seaweed caress the sea, then it’s on around the coast to Surat Bay.
Shipwrecks abound on this coast, and this bay is named for one from 1874.
It’s said that the captain of the Surat, a 1000-tonne three-masted iron sailing ship, was drunk when it foundered. No lives were lost but the immigrants on board, at the end of a gruelling trip from Gravesend in England, lost their belongings in the watery depths.
We call at Jacks Bay, which features in another Catlins tale, this one about the mysterious disappearance of a German naturalist called Dr Schmidt. (Some records have him being the first person to report the presence of gold in Otago).
Armed with a £100 grant from the Provincial Council and other valuables, Schmidt set off through The Catlins in 1855, looking for minerals.
Apparently, he fell out with everyone he encountered, including his two Ma¯ori guides, one of whom was called Bill the Butcher. They resurfaced later without him.
Searchers found the place where the trail for Schmidt went cold by following his discarded foil chocolate wrappings. Some people reckon his valuables might still be buried somewhere near the bay.
Papatowai roughly marks the halfway point of The Catlins journey. A camp for moa bone hunters
used to be a highlight, but these days its resident eccentric is Blair Somerville, who runs Lost Gypsy Curios & Coffee. This is an amusing, must-see world of automata – kooky little machines and contraptions built from scrap and found ephemera.
There’s a sheep skeleton riding a bicycle and a tin whale you can hand-crank into life. It is Pythonesque, weird and wonderful. The cafe is great too, a caravan wonderland with mouthwatering homemade baking.
We check out the must-see Cathedral Caves, huge sea caverns carved out by the tides, then it’s on to Waikawa, an inlet deep in The Catlins that feels like the unofficial capital of the area.
The only soul in evidence is the woman who runs the pleasingly old-school museum, full of family histories, photographs and Catlins curiosities. Inside, I read about how there used to be so much whitebait in the Waikawa River, they’d feed it to the chickens. Tragically, I’ve missed the season by a few days.
Curio Bay is on every itinerary, home to the famous yellow-eyed penguins (hoiho), and the latest addition to Catlins culture: the Tumu Toka Curioscape. Its Gateway Experience is the opposite of the Waikawa Museum: instead of giant dried crayfish in old glass cases, it has interactive, stateof-the-art touchscreens and a flash new cafe. The contrast is perfect. Both offer Catlins stories to fill the imagination.
We walk along the beach at Porpoise Bay in the fading light, hoping for a sighting of the Hector’s dolphins, but they clearly have other matters to attend to. Fortunately, the hoiho are nearby to take up the slack, waddling up from the sea and across the petrified remains of an ancient forest to their nests.
We check in at Slope Point – the southernmost point of the South Island – for a photo, then we head for Fortrose, the last stop on the Catlins trail. The story we find there is a tragic one. A passenger steamer called the SS Tararua struck the reef off Waipapa Point, south of Fortrose, on April 29, 1881. It took 20 hours to sink but, with stormy seas, few could make it to shore. Of the 151 passengers and crew, 131 were lost and it remains New Zealand’s worst civilian maritime disaster. Ten of the dead are buried at Fortrose’s windswept cemetery.
The Catlins, though, is not a downbeat place. It’s almost the perfect touring route, especially if the weather gods are smiling. You have one scenic main road to deal with, filled with points of interest.
Check out Jack’s Blowhole, McLean Falls, the gorgeous Tautuku Estuary walk, the abandoned railway tunnel at Tunnel Hill, overgrown sawmill remnants, and more. The tourist maps list the highlights, but what really matters are the tall tales.
And at each stop there are plenty of salty Catlins stories to be found.