The South Island of New Zealand contains some of the most spectacular scenery this amazing country has to offer – and certainly the most variety. The snow-capped Southern Alps run the full length of the island, dividing it in two and creating a photographer’s fantasy world of mountains, lakes and rivers, glaciers and fiords. Apart from the bat, New Zealand is home to only introduced mammals such as the stoats and weasels, possums, wallabies and deer, none of which are particularly welcome. However, we did spot a few native birds (although their numbers are being decimated by the aforementioned feral predators) most notably, the spectacular karearea or falcon.
Back to geography. On the east coast, the climate is relatively dry and temperate, and generally cooler than the North Island. The interior, abutting the Southern Alps, is dry & rugged. In fact, it’s the driest region in New Zealand, despite large networks of braided rivers. These shallow, broad waterways are made up of multiple channels that diverge and reunite across a gravelly riverbed, and are inclined to shape-shift during flooding. They are also popular with fly fishermen in search of sea trout and salmon. Remember the ABC travel and fly-fishing series ‘A River Somewhere’ with Rob Sitch & Tom Gleisner? In the late 1990s, they introduced us to a wonderful selection of rivers all over the world, including the d’Urville and the Tongariro in New Zealand.
Over thousands of years, some of these braided rivers – such as the Rakaia, Rangitata and Waitaki – have created the fertile Canterbury Plains, as they drag debris from the Southern Alps. Farming has converted the Canterbury Plains into a pretty patchwork of fields and woodland. Just south of the tidy and elegant city of Christchurch, now almost recovered from the effects of four major earthquakes and more than 11,200 aftershocks from September 2010 to the end of 2011.
On the left hand side of the island, the thin strip of rugged and rocky coastline between the Tasman Sea and the Alps, has the highest amount of rainfall in New Zealand. Incessant rain and low-lying cloud may have created hectares of wondrous waterfalls and rainforests, but sadly, they also blocked our view of the two glaciers, Franz Josef and Fox, in much the same way they had immersed the Milford Sound in thick fog when the One & Only drove up in search of wondrous scenery he had been anticipating with great excitement. Weather can be very disappointing.
In this neck of the woods, three huge national parks – Fiordland, Mount Aspiring and The Aoraki/Mount Cook – contain the highest peaks in New Zealand, that rise to 3,000 mtetres high, and have become the country’s most popular centres for hikers, mountaineers, rock climbers, and photographers. And, as a focal point for tourists to stay, Queenstown sits comfortably amid these glorious mountains. It is a beautiful city and the adventure capital of New Zealand, with its opportunities for bungy jumping, sky diving and paragliding, remote cross-country skiing, white water rafting, jet boating and long distance mountain-bike tracks. (Although I must admit that the biggest adventure I had was falling down the stairs in our Queenstown accommodation, which luckily caused no greater damage than an impressive purple bruise from knee to ankle.) For the less intrepid, there are boat trips along the gorgeous Lake Wakatipu, scenic flights up to Milford Sound and beautiful drives up into the mountains or down the Kawarau Gorge into Central Otago’s wine country.
As usual, despite a flurry of guide books, we have largely stayed off the beaten track and ignored many of the travel writers’ hot tips. It has, nonetheless, been a wonderful trip. We met up with cousins in Christchurch and reconnected with a much missed friend who has been living a stone’s throw from Dunedin, since we all lived in the Philippines. The One & Only was keen to look for lighthouses, so after a couple of days of R&R in Outram, we headed south for the Catlins.
The Catlins is a roughly triangular area of some 730 square miles in the south eastern corner of the south island. Sparsely populated, its rugged coastline is populated by caves and blowholes, fur seals and shipwrecks, long sandy beaches, and clifftop shrubbery blown almost horizontal by the wind. Two lighthouses guard the coast at Nugget Point and Waipapa, so you may guess where we headed first.
The first Europeans to arrive in the Catlins were the whalers and sealers in the early 19th century. By the middle of the century, this densely timbered region had also become popular with loggers. The land they cleared to feed the timber mills could then be used for sheep and dairy farming.
We struck a beautiful day for driving through the region, with only the occasional brief shower to dampen our enthusiasm. Calm and sunny, the day belied its more dramatic days of wind and wild weather that blows off the sub-Antarctic ocean. We took a stroll along an almost empty beach at Kaka Point, then trudged a few hundred metres along the narrow cliff path to Nugget Point, past a colony of fur seals way below us, to nod to the lighthouse perched high above the sea-battered rocks below. Waipapa, in contrast, sits on a low-lying promontory, Nearby, a sole fur seal had pulled itself up the sand dunes to lie among the long grasses, where the One & Only nearly tripped over him.
From the Catlins we drove on through farmland riddled with sheep, which seemed to be filling the paddocks in plague proportions compared with our dusty, dry paddocks at home, where flocks are a fraction of the number size, forced to survive on a scant diet of grass and salt bush that usually needs to be supplemented in winter. Here, the pasture is so lush, all year round, that it is hardly surprising that New Zealand lamb is exported in bulk to British supermarkets.
While our sheep must deal with the oppressive, dry heat of South Australia, the cattle and sheep down here in southern Otago face extremes of heat and cold, not to mention the fierce winds blowing in from Antarctica. Having stripped the countryside of its native forests, it has been necessary to build shelter belts – rows of tall, densely planted trees to form windbreaks, to protect animals and orchards from sun, snow and the prevailing winds. Poplars and pines are often used for their height, while these trees may be interspersed with a low-growing species, to thicken the shelter. These strange (to us) long, tall walls of foliage are apparently best if they are at least twice as long as they are high.
We spent the night in Invercargill, then made our way to Lake Manapõuri, where I had a date with my pen and a book shop.
The town of Manapõuri is, to use the local parlance, a wee thing, clinging to the edge of a glorious, glacial lake, and looking over the water to some very dramatic mountains – when there is neither fog nor rain to impede the view. It proved to be a most peaceful and serene corner of the world, with a population of only about 250 inhabitants. Here I was able to spend a couple of quiet, unhurried days writing, while the One & Only attempted to explore Milford Sound.
I also found time to drop into ‘Two Wee Bookshops’ on the corner of Hillside Road and Home Street. And ‘wee’ is the perfect word to describe both the bookshops and their diminutive owner, Ruth Shaw. Ruth published her memoirs ‘The Bookseller at the End of the World,’ in 2022, in which she intersperses memories of her adventurous and often heart-rending life with tales from her tiny second-hand bookshops. We had been reading this fascinating book as we drove south from Auckland (I read aloud, while the One & Only navigates the winding roads), and I was thrilled to realize that the bookshop is still in existence, and has actually expanded from two wee bookshops to three, with the addition of a small garden shed – the Snug – set up for the men, as well as a table of assorted titles under a canvas canopy. In fact, despite the nomenclature, I watched as customers wandered happily from one space to the next, regardless of age or gender!
The first ‘shop’ looks like a gypsy caravan, and is painted as brightly as Kizzy’s own, if you are old enough to remember Rumer Godden’s beautiful book ‘The Diddakoi’. Ruth has filled this one with books from New Zealand authors, both fact and fiction. Across the lawn, the children’s bookshop, complete with a child-sized door – I set off the bell when I forgot to duck at the entrance – was filled with an assortment of books for children and young teens, as well as a soft toy library, to which Ruth devotes several sweet tales in her book.
I arrived on the doorstep on a damp and mizzly morning, eager to meet this quirky author, bookshop owner and sailor, yet feeling a certain apprehension. She knew me not at all, but I had read aloud intimate details of her life. I felt oddly like a voyeur. At least, until we had exchanged a few minutes conversation and found so many common interests that I farewelled her as an old friend and soulmate, and she reciprocated with a huge and affectionate hug. I also took away a book by a New Zealand light house keeper for the One & Only and a promise that Ruth will be in touch when she comes to Australia. And she signed my book – or rather, wrote me a short essay on the title page!
A final note, before I leave you to plan our next trip to New Zealand: don’t forget that like Australia, NZ is in the southern hemisphere, so if you are visiting from the north, don’t forget to reverse the seasons. Summer coincides with Christmas and July is the coldest month of the year. Oh, and did I mention the glow worms…?