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| A magical place - The Nugget Point Lighthouse dates from 1869 and was automated in 1989 |
Have you ever coveted a view? This feeling doesn’t come
over me often, but having seen
pictures of the Nugget Point Lighthouse, I just had to see if it really
did look the way it did in the brochures.
Before that though, my first mission this morning, apart
from trying to get petrol out of an automated bowser with a foreign card, was
to drive back to see
Matai Falls, which I had missed the day before. This was a
lovely waterfall with a second fall, Horseshoe Falls as a bonus, but someone
had told me that the turn – off was about 20km back immediately after the
bridge, so I had an interesting detour around the countryside first, and it was
just as well that the service station was open by the time I got back to Owaka, (home of the Waka or Canoe in Maori).
At least the proprietors
did accept my card, but be aware that this happened to me in a
couple of places, so be sure to carry other options if possible.
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| Looking for Matai Falls - not sure where I ended up here, but it was near one of the former railway towns (see below) |
It is now officially tourist season and the main highway
which links Dunedin with Invercargill is really busy.
After a quick stop at
an abandoned railway tunnel, I was glad to leave the main road behind. The road
through Kaka Point put me back on what remained of the Southern Scenic Route,
which it was indeed, although there are the usual narrow and winding sections,
the closer you get to Nugget Point.
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| Pretty Matai Falls (10m) - an easy walk from the highway, well for most people anyway |
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| Bonus - neighbouring Horseshoe Falls |
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| This abandoned Railway Tunnel 264 metres long took men with picks and shovels two years to build and evokes another lost past. This was part of the Catlin River Branch Line - 1879 -1971, which really opened up the region. When timber reserves began to decline in the 1950's, so did the railway line. It was closed in 1971 |
Nugget Point turns out to be positively breathtaking. It’s a story book
setting with The Lighthouse, built in 1869 perched on an unbelievably beautiful
headland. Birds wheel around rocky outcrops and far below you can see both fur
seals and sea lions while an iridescent blue sea swirls around
the strange rock formations known as the
Nuggets.
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| The pilgrimage begins |
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| The Lighthouse is quite small and not as impressive close up, but the setting is |
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| The Lighthouse is built from local stone quarried on the site |
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| The Nuggets |
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| Looking down -The white flecks on these rocks are Royal Spoonbills. if you are lucky you will see fur seals and sea lions too |
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| Western side of Nugget Point looking back from the Lighthouse |
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| Shaped by the wind |
The wind is cold and it rains
all the way to Dunedin. The only place I stop is at a little seaside takeaway to buy some what I hope are authentic Fush and Chups – the best value meal I
have in New Zealand,
just before the Scenic
Route rejoins the highway. It is on Molyneux
Bay, which was once a busy harbour based around Port Molyneux at the mouth of
the mighty Clutha River, the longest in New Zealand.
Captain
Cook actually gave the name to a different part of the coastline after the
master of the
Endeavour, but the
spelling changed and it became attached to this region.
During the whaling days in the
1830’s, it was a very busy place with a long jetty.
Unfortunately
in 1878, torrential rain followed
by
a great flood, relocated the river mouth and left the town high and
dry
behind a sandbar one kilometre from the shore. Although no longer
important for transport and trade, the bay is obviously still popular with
holiday makers and beachgoers since I have trouble getting a parking spot, even on this dismal day.
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| Looking east towards Cape Molyneux |
The township of
Balclutha,
where the roads meet, marks the end of the
Catlins, the region through which I
have been travelling. It got its name from the Captain of a whaling ship, one
Edward Cattlin, who bought land from the enterprising Tuawaiki* or “Bloody Jack”
in 1840, just before he signed the Treaty of Waitangi. Although many such sales
were overturned, the sales to two Europeans in the Balclutha area were not, thereby
starting it on an agricultural path – sheep and cattle mostly, which it has pursued
ever since.
Clutha was the old name for
the river Clyde in Scotland, and the Bal before it is Gaelic for town.
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| Free plug for this little place for value for money. Where else would you get good seafood if not on the coast? |
Places I wish I had seen in Dunedin
I wish I had longer in Dunedin. It’s a bit smaller than
Hobart (128,800 people vs 150,000 respectively) and similarly located on a lovely
harbour with hills all around. It appears to have some interesting buildings
such as the
old railway station and
the university (the oldest in New Zealand)
and a multi storey red one on the way to the hostel, which was presumably a flour mill or some other kind
of factory - never did find out. (Dunedin also had a Cadbury Factory just like
Hobart and both, now owned by Mondalez International, an offshoot of Kraft,
recently closed their visitor facilities).
I would also have liked to see
Baldwin Street,
which held the title of the world’s steepest street from 1987 until 2019, and most of all
I would have liked to have taken the
Taeiri Gorge Railway to Middlemarch, but
none of that was to be. Between the rain and the fact the car was due back in
Queenstown at the crack of dawn the following day with 312 km in between,
left me little choice but to spend the night and head straight out in the
morning.
* Spelling varies - in Fortrose, they spell it the other way
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