Perfect Purakaunui- Catlins

 Catch-up

The DOC camp at Purakaunui Bay is our next stop as we travel north through the Catlins.

Along the way, we stop at the Florence Hill Lookout for morning tea. The lookout overlooks the coastline which includes beautiful Tautuku Bay, where the native bush reaches right down to the edge of the dunes. This is one of the most well known & iconic views you'll see as you travel the Catlins. You can access the beach from a narrow track through the bush at the bottom of the hill, we've done this on one of our previous Catlins trips.

Our destination, Purakaunui Bay, is famous for being one of the locations for the film The Chronicles of Narnia; the Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. The towering bluffs along the north side of the bay were used in the film.

Although we've visited the bay before we've not stayed at the DOC camp (it's a basic camp with long-drop facilities). The camping area is large with several areas to park in, although the ground is quite lumpy and can be very boggy even in the middle of summer. There are a few gravel areas beside the road where you can park if you don't want to venture onto the grass. 

There's also a couple of grass patches where smaller vans or tents can camp closer to the beach. You do have to drive along the sand to access these areas though.

Once you turn off the Purakaunui Falls Road, there's 6kms of gravel road to travel to reach Purakaunui Bay, the last kilometre is very narrow & one way so proceed cautiously. We find that if you travel these roads late morning or early afternoon you'll usually miss the campers coming out that have stayed overnight or the day trippers heading home in the late afternoon. 

I say 6kms of gravel but that doesn't include the 8kms or so on the Purakaunui Falls Road once you leave the main highway at the Catlins River Estuary. This is the better road to take if you're coming from either direction, the others are also gravel, hilly & winding.

We stayed in early February and there weren't too many campers about. Unlike the January day when I visited several years ago when every available space was taken up by tents & motorhomes. 

The Purakaunui River past the camp & out to sea 

We arrived early afternoon and managed to park in one of the better spots, overlooking the beach and beside a small creek that joins the river, so no one could crowd us out.  

The road ends at the top of a hill just past the camp & overlooking the beach. I don't think many campers realise that the area at the top is also part of the camp and you can park up there too. 

A short vehicle track leads to a couple of reasonably flat areas that overlook the bay in one direction... 

...and the lower camp in the other.

I had seen a few vehicles drive through the camp and up the hill, and then return to park up. They probably thought they weren't allowed to stay up the top as there are no signs there but when I saw a DOC worker camped there, I checked the info board out to see that the area was included in the camp boundaries. 

I was actually a bit peeved off with the DOC guy to be honest as he had set up his tent in the one clear area I had sussed out the day before, for a sunrise shot. I felt a bit creepy tiptoeing around his tent the next morning trying not to make the grass crackle as I tried to shoot the sunrise. 

So I wandered further up the hill and when I returned he was up and had his billy on. I had a chat with him while he made his breakfast. He was on a week long job in the Catlins and while there was a nearby DOC house he could stay in, he preferred to camp here. And you can see why, what a view to wake up to.

Other campers had made their way to the beach to watch the sunrise, one person meditating, another doing yoga while others just stood in awe and watched the bay fill with beautiful colour & light.  

Many more had no idea what they were missing; by far the best part of the day!

The love bird couple in this tent probably thought all their Christmases had come at once when they secured the perfect spot right on the edge overlooking the beach. 

 

They went out for the day as we did too and when we returned later in the afternoon, a huge squall had blown through and obliterated their gazebo with all the piping buckled & bent and no sign of the top. There was broken china, upended chairs, clothes & shoes scattered far & wide. 

We offered them cups & plates to use but they made do with the remnants. I guess they won't do that again in a hurry, luckily their tent stayed in one piece although a few of the guy wires had come loose.  

The Purakaunui River flows out alongside the camp and across the beach to the sea. The tannin stained water provided the perfect place for the Red-billed Gulls to partake in their daily ablutions. 

It was fun to sit and watch them as they called to & squabbled amongst each other as they lined up to take the next available space when one departed. One gull in particular spent ages having a bath, getting annoyed at another one when it sat too close in front of him and finally leaving with a hop, skip & jump. 

Of course a visit to the Purakaunui Bay is not complete without a visit to the Purakaunui Falls, another top tourist attraction in the Catlins. We've been before, actually twice, but I enjoy visiting places more than once, you never know the different conditions you can find from visit to visit. And especially waterfalls as the flow can change dramatically. 

On this day there was a mediocre flow but with a slow shutter speed & my tripod (which I don't usually cart with me on walks, preferring to shoot on the run) I managed some half decent shots. And a bonus was that there were very few tourists crowding out the platform jostling for a clear spot & I didn't have to contend with people down on the rocks in front having in-depth discussions or their picnic lunch! One day I'll catch the falls in full flood. Now that would be a sight.

On the day of the squall we drove around to Jacks Bay to check for sealions. There hadn't been any haul ashore at Purakaunui while we'd been there, or none that I could see.

Jacks Bay cliffs are similar to Purakauni Bay

We'd seen a few at Jacks Bay before but not on this day, the beach was bare. So we took a right at the end of the road on the way out and headed to the outlet on the south side of the Catlins River Estuary. Again there was nothing about other than a couple of people gathering shellfish.

We turned around and headed for home looking for a lunch spot along the estuary & out of the wind. We pulled into a small clearing & when I scanned the sand dunes with the binoculars I saw what I thought was a sealion. I rugged up- it had turned cold- and trudged through the dunes in the gale force wind with stinging sand whipping my bare legs. 

As I got close this big old fella with his rheumy eyes & gummy mouth lifted his head to look at me.

I'm sure he was thinking "Where the heck did you come from?" as he looked from side to side & rose up onto his hind flippers. He did a couple of shuffles and then thought better of it and collapsed back into a heap on the sand & closed his eyes. I headed off back to the ute, now fighting the wind and sand head on while trying to keep my camera out of harms way, tucked into my jacket. You can see the sand flying past the front of the sealion in the photos. 

Back at the camp there was excitement down on the beach. Not only had two sealions hauled out onto the beach while we were out but one of them, a large male had chased a couple & their two children across the beach at a very fast pace and they had been quite terrified by the encounter. Those are his 'running' track marks below. In the background is another camper being very careful how close she got to him- the dark patch at the end of the tracks- to take photos.

He obviously wasn't too worried, he was soon fast asleep oblivious to the terror he'd inflicted, that's him bottom right.  I walked to the far end of the beach to check out the other large male dozing in a lump of seaweed (below left & top right).

And then in the rocks at the top of the bay where I located a female sealion, she's barely visible & hiding as best she can from marauding males. Males are relentless in their pursuit at this time of the year, they chase females trying to round them up into harems. Except on the mainland there aren't that many females so they can be the target of many males. 

Females are a third of the size of a fully grown male, they are also a creamy beige or grey colour whereas males are brown and have rough hair manes (hence the sealion name). Can you see her? Click the photo to enlarge. 

Perhaps this was why the first male wasn't happy to share his beach with humans, he was hunting for his female. I quietly backed off and left her to her hiding spot. 

Camp Niagara- The Catlins

Catch-up

After we left Hinahina, our next stop was the Niagara Falls. Yes that's right Niagara Falls, this is the New Zealand version of the famous falls. The falls were named by a surveyor with a sense of humour; that's them in the background, just a small cascade of water over some rocks. Mind you, a day later and the falls had doubled in height and the rocks had disappeared. I bet the better known version could never claim that.

We actually visited the falls on one of our previous trips through the Catlins and checked out the NZMCA Park which is just across the road, but this time we were staying.

It's a lovely well looked after park and the local branch have done wonders with the site- even though on our last visit we were aghast at the shingle laid down and no grass available to park on- after 3 years in the South Island we've learnt, you need gravel. There's a short loop track through a native bush grove which will attract and add to the many birds in the area. This Kereru/Wood Pigeon greeted us at the gate one evening, not moving until after I opened the gate.

The Park is an ideally situated base for exploring the southern end of the Catlins. Waikawa, Porpoise Bay, Curio Bay and the Petrified Forest are just a short drive away with Slope Point and Waipapa Point a little further south and the Chaslands Highway, Cathedral Caves, McLean Falls and Tautuku beach not too far north.

Once again the weather played havoc with out plans and we had two days of solid wind and rain. And once again we hunkered down, watching the comings and goings of other members who quite possibly were on their holidays and on more fixed itineraries. I did feel sorry for them, the Catlins is not nice in crappy weather.

David had a short burst of activity before the rain arrived; fishing the river that runs behind the site. But he found the nearly black and slow moving water a little spooky in the twilight and saw nothing rise so gave it away after a short time. 

The banks were also overgrown and very slippery with long grass running right down to edge. One slip and you'd have headed over the bank and into the water....as I nearly did from half way up! I forgot the memo- don't wear Crocs when clambering about on slippery river banks.

The caravans above and below are whitebaiter 'huts'. We're not very far from the Waikawa Estuary here and the river is a very popular during the whitebait season. We stopped to talk to a couple of locals who were re-cutting a track to their stands. They told us- with a bit of prodding- that they'd caught 30kgs & 50kgs respectively last season. Now that's a good haul! 

This caravan has a great name, perhaps it should be parked at the entrance to the NZMCA Park! 

In between rain squalls we did a tiki-tour up the Waikawa Valley, over the MacLennan Range down the Tahakopa Valley to Papatowai and back along the Chaslands Highway home. Not one of our more exciting road trips but interesting all the same. I did love the narrow alleyway cut through the Catlins Forest over the range. It reminded me of the kiwifruit shelterbelts back in the Bay of Plenty.

For much of the way, the trees on the left were up against a rock wall, the road cut through lower than top of the range but then I couldn't decide if it was rock or deep forest behind other sections including the right hand side.

The long Tahakopa Valley is mostly commercial forestry and the only other vehicles we met on the road were logging trucks. 

We stopped to check out a memorial to the area's early settlers, the 'MacLennan Clan' and after who the range and a settlement on the main road near Papatowai, are named after. 

Our next stop was at the once bustling settlement of Tahakopa, 9kms inland from the Tahakopa Estuary and Papatowai. There are just eight permanent residents here and a handful of cottages in various states of disrepair & restoration.

Tahakopa was once the rail head for the branch line from Balclutha; the Catlins River Branch serviced first, the logging industry (there were once 16 sawmills in the valley), and then the farming communities as the valley opened up to early settlers. The line closed in 1971 which sadly signalled the demise of the settlement. The old railway station is slowly being reclaimed by nature.

One bright beacon in Tahakopa is the restored  'Our Hut', once a church and then the local hall, the historic building was built in 1921.

 'Our Hut' is used for meetings and gatherings and also holds records of much of Tahakopa's history.

Back on the coast, the wind was whipping along and the rain squalls horizontal. We stopped at the Florence Hill lookout over Tautuku Bay, an iconic Catlins scene. The wind was so strong I could hardly push the door open to get out and then once I did I had to brace myself against the ute to take a shot. I managed one shot before stinging rain pummeled my face and the camera lens. Funny how this looks such a serene shot.

We drove down to the bottom of the hill and out onto the beach, hoping for some shelter so we could have lunch. Instead of stinging rain we got stinging sand! We backed right up to the dunes beside a stream and had lunch on the tailgate, the cab offering a little bit of shelter. I told David he had better hold tight to his mug of tea but he sat it on the tailgate, it wasn't long before it was over.

A surfer from a rental motorhome tested the on-shore breeze and even though the waves don't look much from here they were quite large and very messy. His friends got a little concerned for him (as did David) after he disappeared for a long while and then popped up way down by the rocks.

I did a little processing on this shot, a good one for a tourism company perhaps- I imagine the occupants sitting inside in awe of their surroundings and not quite believing that they could drive onto a beach and be the only ones there (until we arrived). 

We headed off home and it rained solid all the way back to Niagara.

The only problem with the Niagara site was that there is absolutely no cellphone coverage which in turn usually means no internet either. And while most people are on holiday and not bothered, it soon becomes a problem for those of us that live on the road and/or need to have some contact with the outside world. One day is OK, 2 days bearable, 3 days- get me out of there!

So it was just as well our Netspeed modem is mobile and 12V, we were able to un-plug it from it's cubbyhole in the van, plug it in the ute's lighter socket and take it for a drive until we registered a signal. It doesn't sit in the iPad (TomTom) holder, I just moved it from the centre console so it could be in the shot. So with a signal, it's just a matter of connecting to the modem from our smart phone, iPad or laptops as per normal.

And it just happened that signal was strong and clear at the top of the lookout at Curio Bay, 16kms from Niagara. Well in fact the signal showed up a little earlier but why not make the most of the outing by making sure we had a great view while catching up with internet chores and phone calls. This was a Vodafone connection through Netspeed, our Spark mobiles were very weak, in fact virtually non-existent, the first time we've found Vodafone better than Spark. 

As you can see the weather was once again wild and stormy and heading our way- this is overlooking Curio Bay and the Petrified Forest, which is at the far end of the bay. The wind is holding me off the edge here, it's gale force and quite thrilling and scary at the same time. 

It's a 50 foot drop onto the rocks below and the waves are crashing over the rocky platform. I watched numerous tourists near the edge jumping in the air and flying backwards onto the ground or actually trying to fly while friends took photos. I'm not sure how they would have fared if the wind had died suddenly.

Because of the weather the Curio Bay campground wasn't too busy each time we drove through it, but those that were there were quite sheltered in amongst the flax bushes.

Porpoise Bay was just as uninviting with very few people on the beach or looking out for Hectors Dolphins from the banks above the beach.

The rain came and went along with the tourists, in the end the wind got so ferocious there was just us and a lone seagull fighting the elements at the top of the hill.

Of course it made total sense, being a Friday night and all, to stop at the famous Waikawa fish and chip caravan to pick dinner up on the way home. T'was perfect too! I know one thing I'm going to miss when we do return to the North Island for good- Blue Cod!