Daily Photo – Gun Emplacements at Harrington Point
Destination: Oban from a Small City
Geographically, Stewart Island – or Rakiura, if you prefer its original name – feels like the forgotten child of New Zealand. Everyone knows it exists. Everyone agrees it is important. Yet ask why, or if they’ve actually been there, and you will usually be met with a polite shrug or an embarrassed shake of the head. Most New Zealanders will speak of its beauty with great authority, despite never having set foot on its soil.
Sheltered inlets curl gently into the land, forested hills rise and fall without fuss, and rugged coastlines keep the Southern Ocean at arm’s length. It is a place where quiet beaches give way to dunes and walking tracks that vastly outnumber roads. Stewart Island is covered in roughly 20 kilometres of roading and around 245 kilometres of walking track. There are not many places left where that particular ratio still exists, and it tells you almost everything you need to know.
The main settlement, Oban, sits beside Halfmoon Bay and is home to most of the island’s population, which hovers around 400 people. Long before Europeans arrived, Māori knew the island as Rakiura, the “Land of the Glowing Skies” – a name that makes complete sense once you have seen dawn or dusk there. Later came sealers, whalers, sawmillers, and fishermen, all leaving their mark in ways that still linger quietly rather than shout for attention.
I landed late in the afternoon, found my accommodation, and went for a brief evening stroll. After a bite to eat, I found my way back to my motel and was quickly asleep. The next morning, I was up early to take advantage of the still, quiet streets as dawn was breaking over the bay. Usually, at that hour, you will spot at least one other person who has made similarly questionable life choices, but there was not a soul. I could have walked completely naked down the main street and no one would have known. It felt like a town temporarily loaned to me: peaceful, still, and slightly unreal. I enjoyed the silence as long as I could, but eventually, hunger won out. I had breakfast, packed a lunch and a book, and set off for a delightfully long walk through the bays.
Later that day, tired but satisfied, I called in at the South Seas Hotel. Inside was a cosy bar with a dozen or so people seated along an old wooden counter, talking easily with the bartender in the way you do with someone you’ve known a lifetime. The place had that reassuringly worn-in feel that only genuine local pubs ever manage. However, I soon noticed that everyone seemed to be staring at me. It was slightly unnerving until I realized the cause: I was the only person in the room who didn’t look like they had just emerged from several days in the deep bush. In my faded shorts, t-shirt, and hoodie, I was decidedly overdressed. I stayed much longer than planned without any particular reason, which is usually the sign of a good pub.
A reliable metric of quality town planning is how many steps one must take to get from a pub to a takeaway outlet offering grease-fired food for the semi-inebriated. In this regard, Oban scores well. Not far from the pub sits the Kai Kart, a caravan quietly producing what many believe are the best fish and chips in the country. There is nothing fancy about it; the secret is simply good food, done properly, and eaten outside while looking over the water.
My remaining days were a blur of walking tracks and hidden bays. On my second afternoon, I came across an old Ford bus that had clearly not moved in some time. Painted on its side were the words “Sam and Billy the Bus, take a scenic tour,” followed by a phone number. It was both charming and intriguing. You do not see many buses of that vintage anymore, and you see even fewer advertising tours in such an unassuming way. I later learned that Sam was a much-loved local who spent more than twenty years taking visitors around the island in his bus, Billy. Knowing that made the bus feel less abandoned and more like it was simply resting between stories. On the third day I walked to Ackers Cottage in Harrold Bay on the Southern side of Halfmoon Bay. The stone cottage is the earliest stone house in the area and was built by Lewis Acker who started life in New England, America and went to sea which brought him to the shores of Aotearoa as a 16 year old. Several years later he returned as part of the sealing and whaling industry eventually purchasing 600 acres of land in Harrold Bay on Stewart Island. In the small bay he built a remarkable stone, one room, two windowed house where he lived with his wife Mary Pi and eight children until they moved back to the mainland. He spent time working in the sealing and whaling industry, he built boats, ran a sawmill, was a river boat pilot and also ran a farm. At the time of his death in 1885, aged around 70 he had been married twice and was father to 14 children, having outlived six of them. The thing is, it’s not until you actually see the cottage and its location that you realise how remarkable, and difficult, life must have been.
On my final evening, I decided to make my way up to Observation Rock before sunset. The name had led me to imagine a long and heroic climb into a remote wilderness, an adventurous, rewarding way to end my time in Oban. In reality, it was a steep but manageable twenty-minute walk from town. The reward, however, was no less grand: a sweeping view over Thule and Golden Bay, and out across the deep blue of Paterson Inlet. It is one of those places where you arrive slightly out of breath and immediately forget why you were complaining.
Before leaving the next morning, I took one last walk along Lee Bay beach and came to a simple conclusion. I like Stewart Island. Not because it tries to impress you, but because it doesn’t have to. It is quiet without being dull, remote without being inaccessible, and rich in stories that do not demand your attention. Stewart Island does not shout. It waits. And if you take the time to listen, it is remarkably generous in what it gives back.
