Catlins

Image Credit: Rowboat on a river through native forest, [The Catlins]. From the album Untitled landscape album, circa 1880, New Zealand, maker unknown. Te Papa

Tucked into the southernmost corner of the South Island is a wild, partly bush-clad landscape that transports you back to the pioneer days of New Zealand. The road that winds through the rolling hill country of the remote Catlins region (Route 92) is now fully sealed. This 170-kilometre road, south of Dunedin, links Balcutha and Invercargill. Taking it gives you access to a wealth of wild coastline, dense native forests, and human history. It’s worth spending three or more days exploring this fascinating area.

Early Maori found this coast a plentiful food source. They also hunted the now extinct, giant flightless bird, the moa, whose bones have been excavated by archeologists. Whaling brought the first Europeans in the mid 1800s, and stations were established at Fortrose, Waikawa and Tautuku. The region got its name (slightly misspelt) from a ship’s captain, Edward Cattlin who supplied the southern whaling stations. He bought a vast area of land from Maori chief Tuhawaiki in 1840, but after the Treaty of Waitangi, this was reduced to about 100 hectares. When whaling declined, sawmilling became the predominant industry. In the 1870s sawmills were built near the harbours so small coastal ships could take the sawn timber to markets. A railway line from Owaka allowed sawmills to be built further away. As the once extensive forest diminished, roads were added in the 1920s to make transporting logs easier. The boom years were over by about 1955 and, of the 182 sawmills that operated at some time in the Catlins, only one is working today. Farmers tried their luck on land cleared for timber. Some were successful, but the less fertile lands were left to revert to scrub and bush.

All along the coast, seething surf pounds golden beaches that you can reached by short, well-marked tracks from the roadside. Despite the long history of timber milling in the region, these tracks lead you under tall trees - rimu, matai, kahikatea or totara - that are hundreds of years old. In summer, rata and kamahi flower profusely, and the forest floor is covered in ferns. The songs of bush birds, such as tui, bellbird, grey warbler and tomtit, will accompany you and you’ll see flocks of fat wood pigeons. Once you reach the shore, you might find yellow-eyed penguins standing around, their pink webbed feet looking curiously vulnerable in this rugged environment. Or you might come across a seal or two, hauled out on the rocks.

A major attraction are the Cathedral Caves, a set of interlocking lofty sea caves that require a torch for full exploration. They’re only accessible an hour either side of low tide, so timing your visit is crucial. A tide table at the entrance road indicates the times it’s possible to visit the caves.

Equally fascinating and also needing low tide - is the fossil forest at Curio Bay. On the sea-eroded platform, you can walk on the floor of a forest that lived in Jurassic times – about 180 million years ago. Of international significance, this ancient forest was destroyed by a lahar from an adjacent volcano. Take time to get your eye in. Those strange lumpy objects are actually the stumps of primitive trees – cycads, tree ferns, and kauri ancestors that predated the evolution of flowering plants. Look closely. Some still reveal their annual growth rings, preserved inside layers of silica-hardened mudstone.

More obvious are the long thin fossilised tree trunks, mostly aligned in the direction of the volcano blast. The living trees themselves were not old – about thirty to forty years – as this forest was the last in a line of forests destroyed by lahars from the volcano. And if this doesn’t pique your interest, take a longer walk in silver beech forest beside the Catlins River. Visit a waterfall or some relics of the timber milling era, enjoy a leisurely picnic in a sheltered bay.

An easy walk on an old coach road will take you to an interpreted archaeological site beside the sheltered inlet where the Tahakopa River meets the sea. Ancient moahunters once camped and fished in this place. The whole area is redolent of human history, from the first Polynesian people to settle here, through the tumultuous events of Maori inter- tribal battles, the earliest sealers and whalers, to the pioneer farmers that braved this remote and rugged region.

PRIVATE TOUR OF THE CATLINS FROM DUNEDIN