Clifden Caves

A cave for the brave. Anyone keen enough to spend two hours underground for a buzz and a glimpse of a glo-worm, stop here. If you are not fit and familiar with caving, forget it. Park your car, check for flash floods, jump the stile, head underground…

Plenty of wending winding and crawling to be done down here, often on hands and knees. When you come to the first pool, sidle left along the ledge rather then taking a swim in the cold and deep water. Keep left again at the junction and continue your journey towards the light. It is all limestone down here, these caves are geological cousins to the famed Waitomo and Punakaiki ones, dating back to when all of Zealandia was seafloor. After uplift, the acidity of groundwater has created the cracks in the limestone, and the dripping process by which stalagmites and stalagtites are then recreated.

Orange markers from DOC should keep cavers on track, and no-one should take this cursory advice as a guide, please download the DoC guide below.

For those not going subterranean, there is, just up the road is the Clifden Suspension Bridge to sit under, and a bit of a picnic area. Until the bridge was opened in 1899, there was just a punt across the Waiau river here, which made everything on the other side rather inaccessible. The Waiau can be fast flowing and lives were lost in it's navigation in the days before the bridge. Later, changes associated with the creation of the Manapouri Power Station reduced the flow of the river significantly.

If you visit Clifden, please feel free to send NZPlacesyour words and pictures, especially of the reported Maori Rock Drawings which are said to another feature of this area, we don't yet know where they are. Artist Theo Schoon reported on these in 1948.

Image Credit: Clifden section, Waiau river, 01 May 1950, Southland, by Leslie Adkin. Te Papa