A flash every 10 seconds
Southland’s and New Zealand’s tallest lighthouse is the 37m Dog Island lighthouse about six kilometres off the Bluff coast.
The lighthouse was proposed in 1861 and the light was turned on on August 1, 1865.
It was built of local stone but cracking and subsidence threatened the structure.
It was secured with timber and iron bands and in 1916 the tower was concreted to provide permanent stability.
The light, flashing every 10 seconds, is visible from 41km.
It was de-manned in 1989 and the island has remained uninhabited since then.
Southernmost town
Southland’s and New Zealand’s southernmost town, Oban, is still 3500km north of the world’s southernmost – McMurdo Station in Antarctica – which has a summer population of over 1000.
Nearby Scott Base is the southernmost permanent New Zealand habitation but a long way off being a town.
Although not in Southland, the settlement of Hardwicke on Auckland Island survived from 1849 to 1852.
In this time it produced New Zealand’s southernmost marriages (five) and births (sixteen). Today, only a few bricks, broken bottles, scraps of rusted iron and gravestones mark the site of Hardwicke. The future of Oban is somewhat brighter.
Royal visit declined
In 1901 Southland tried really hard to get a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, later King George V and Queen Mary, when they were on a visit to New Zealand. The captain of the Royal Yacht Ophir declined to enter what were considered dangerous harbours with his valuable cargo.
The Hinemoa was sent to check out the various potential ports of call and Lyttelton, Bluff and Milford Sound were ruled out. This resulted in no visit to Bluff and a rather risky trans-shipping off Lyttelton from the Governor’s Yacht.
Petty Officer Harry Price from the Ophir kept a diary, which was later published as a perspective of the tour from “the lower deck’’.
“It was about 8pm, when we perceived the Governor's yacht approaching with the Royal Party on the saloon deck, she was brilliantly lit up with electricity, and as she came on rockets ascended in all directions.
‘’When she came closer we saw that there would be some difficulty in getting their Royal Highnesses from one ship to another, the swell was so great, but after considerable trouble a gangboard was got out, and waiting their first opportunity the Royal Party quickly ran on board, the Duchess first, the Duke following; and only just in time for the ships came together with a crash and then rolled far apart, leaving the gangboard dangling down from the Ophir's upper deck.
“One of our four principal gangway ladders was smashed to matchwood also the lower boom, a long spar some fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, a lot more damage was done but the Governor's yacht suffered the most, she having some of her plates stove in and her bridge smashed, and after we got the Royal suite and luggage on board, she left with all possible speed for Lyttelton to go in dock and we got up anchor and proceeded on our way to Tasmania."