I’d driven up to Oamaru for the day and, as always, ended up wandering through the town’s remarkable heritage precinct. It’s one of those places that makes you feel as though you’ve stepped into another century, all creamy limestone facades, iron railings, and a faint whiff of coal smoke in the imagination.
Eventually, I found myself on Harbour Street, the heart of it all, and honestly, it was just lovely. The buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, each one a relic from the town’s glory days, now home to art galleries, antique shops, and cafés that sell tea in mismatched china.
But here’s what I don’t understand: why on earth is the street still open to traffic? It’s narrow, charming, and practically begging to be pedestrian-only. Nothing quite spoils the mood of admiring Victorian architecture like dodging SUVs and utes crawling past at two kilometres an hour. It made no sense at all, I pondered this for some time. Eventually giving up and headed for an Art Gallery then maybe a cup of coffee and biscuit.
Lovingly restored over a number of years, the old two room stone building appeared in superb condition on the outside and I was delighted to find both rooms unlocked so visitors like myself could have a poke around. The first room I went into contained old leather and heavy dark metal harness gear hanging from the walls, not far from where these were framed pictures that told the story of the cottage. The most prominent feature was an old large, old fireplace, oven, or forge made of stone and built-in to the wall beneath the chimney in the corner of the room.
The second room was much the same, bare but for a few horse shoes hanging on the far wall from the door. The floor closest to the door was concrete and moving further back, the floor transitioned to packed earth that extended to the base of the walls. Thoughtfully, a hole had been cut in the wall so you could peer between rooms which proved to be extremely useful for taking photos. I walked back and forth between rooms for a while. I stood and looked around each room and one thing bothered me. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how they’d managed to find the room to excavate underneath the to make room for an illegal whisky distillery that was rumoured to be hidden under the floorboards. Not only that, I wouldn’t know where to start! Either way, it was a very impressive effort, and rather clever.
I drove through heavy mid-morning rain. Here and there, the road dipped into large muddy puddles that I bounced in and out of, spraying water and loose gravel across the car as I did so. Berwick Forest is only a forty-minute drive from Dunedin, and I’d been there on an errand which also provided the opportunity to go on a longer drive, away from the usual motorways, streets, and footpaths that I frequent over the course of a typical week.
Earlier that morning I had passed through small rural settlements with names such as Outram, Woodside Glen, and Berwick. I had it in mind to take a different route home, just to keep things interesting and the mind active. The surrounding countryside gradually became more hilly and disappeared into thick white clouds. Large pools of water were forming into new streams that cut through paddocks and ran down across the road. It had been years since I’d driven this particular road, so I spent the time looking out the car window as I bounced along, identifying possible photographic subjects with a sense of joy and intrigue. Every so often being reminded that I was in charge of a 1,600 kg (1.6 tonnes) motor vehicle, as a stone ricocheted off the windscreen.
At some point, between splashes of water and sprays of stones, I came across one of those road signs that indicate places of interest or historical significance. This one read: “McDonald’s Historic Cottage 2 km.” I thought that sounded like a nice place to drive past, and it was.
I found it thanks to a large blue sign hanging from a fence that told me the wee stone cottage was built in 1860 by the McDonald family. The building was a nice place – small, quaint, but remarkably pleasant for a two-room stone cottage sitting on somebody’s front lawn. Its approximate area being 33 m² (I did the math). Once a two-room dairy and bakery, it also had an illegal whisky distillery hidden under the floorboards.
I took this photo a few summers ago while spending a few days in Wanaka. I was there between Christmas and New Year, at that in-between moment when the Christmas celebrations had begun to fade and everyone’s attention was shifting toward welcoming the year ahead. The town was overrun with holiday energy, families picnicking by the lake, people soaking up the summer sun, and travellers passing through.
A bit of a change in direction today and a break from the usual travelogue …
Daily Photo – Lan Yuan
Why This “Quiet” Photo Was a Technical Battle
Every now and then, you take a photo that looks like it should be the easiest thing in the world. It’s a beautiful scene, some tranquil garden, maybe, or a quiet street. You look at the raw file (that top image, the one with all the orange marks) and think, lovely. You look at the final image (the bottom one), and you think, perfect.
But what’s the distance between lovely and perfect? That’s where the work sits. And in a photo like this, that work is all down to one of the most stubborn issues a photographer faces when shooting architecture: converging verticals.
The Problem with the Real World
The buildings in this shot that surround the Dunedin Chinese Gardens are meant to stand upright, proud, and square. But because of the lens, the height and the angle the camera lens did what it does best: it lied.
If you look closely at the raw file, you can see how those vertical lines, the edges of the walls, the pillars, the windows are all leaning into the centre. They look like they’re about to fall over, or maybe they just had a long night. It’s that classic “keystone” effect, and it immediately breaks the serene feeling of the place.
Now, this isn’t just one building. This is a complex arrangement of walls and corners, all at slightly different distances and angles. It’s a technical nightmare in the editing suite because correcting one set of lines perfectly often makes the adjacent set of lines look completely warped. It’s like trying to untangle one knot on a fishing line only to find you’ve created three more.
The Grunt Work in the Post-Processing Darkroom
There’s no magic button for this. Getting from that leaning, slightly chaotic raw file to the balanced, final image was a process of very fine adjustments, the kind that requires a cup of coffee and a lot of quiet concentration.
I had to put on my architect’s hat and methodically tackle the geometry:
Transform Tool, Not Magic: This involved manually adjusting the perspective and vertical guides both Lightroom and Photoshop. I wasn’t just pulling a slider; I was nudging it, checking the highlighted lines (the ones I’ve marked in orange), nudging again, checking the opposite side, and then nudging again until the eye accepted the view as naturally straight.
Fighting the Stretch: When you correct converging lines, you stretch the image. You have to be mindful that the proportions of the elements, the windows, the roof overhangs don’t become too tall or too thin. It’s a constant trade-off between straight lines and believable shapes.
The Final Layers: Only once the structure was sound and once the buildings looked like they were firmly anchored and not listing like a rusty ship could I move on to the easier, more enjoyable work of bringing the whole scene to life.
In the end, what looks like a simple, polished photograph is really a technical triumph over the lens’s distortions. It’s proof that sometimes, the most peaceful scenes are the ones that demand the most time and technical fussing to get right.
It’s that quiet satisfaction, the one you get from fixing a complex problem without leaving a trace of the effort, that makes the whole process worthwhile. It’s also a reminder to work slowly, and look carefully.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Has anyone else had a deceptively difficult image like this? Share your perspective battles below.
If we go back in time to the 1940s, Brighton was a popular seaside holiday spot and connected to Dunedin via the Brighton Branch Railway. In many ways, not too dissimilar to what it is today. Brighton is the kind of place that comes alive in summer. During winter, it slips into a sort of semi-hibernation as the southerlies bite, but once spring arrives, the colours return and the days slowly warm, leading into the long weeks of summer. That’s when Brighton is at its best.
There’s the annual gala day to look forward to, or you can simply wander into the local dairy for the essentials of a Kiwi summer: a classic ice cream cone, a piping-hot pottle of chips with sauce, a pie, or a thick milkshake. You can hire paddle boats and drift lazily around the estuary, watch local kids leap from the town bridge into the river, clamber over the nearby rocks exploring rock pools, or spend time with the ever-growing sea lion population. And, of course, you can always just stretch out on the beach and let Brighton do what it does best – let you enjoy summer.
Overnight the temperature dipped, and by morning Dunedin had slipped back into winter, despite the calendar insisting it was spring. A thin dusting of snow lay across the city, settling on rooftops and lawns, as though someone had quietly shaken icing sugar over everything while we slept. It wasn’t enough to cause any trouble, just enough to raise eyebrows, especially from those who had already swapped coats for lighter jackets.
This is one of the curiosities of living here: the seasons are more suggestion than certainty. Spring might well bring daffodils, blossom, and lambs in the paddocks, but just as quickly it can deliver a southerly front that chills you to the bone. And yet, far from being an inconvenience, these sudden turns in the weather feel almost like Dunedin showing off. A reminder that it can shift moods overnight, and in doing so, make even the familiar look quietly extraordinary.
I found myself at Fairlight. At first glance, it’s just a station beside the road, the sort of place you could drive past without a second thought, but this patch of ground was once “The Ten Mile,” a staging stop for horses and travellers in the pre-railway days. Then came the 10th of July, 1878, when the first train rattled through on the newly completed Athol-to-Kingston line. Invercargill marked the occasion with a celebration excursion – five engines, twenty carriages, and, no doubt, a few startled sheep watching the spectacle thunder across the paddocks. For the locals, it must have been a very big day indeed.
The building here today wasn’t even born at Fairlight, it began life as Otautau’s railway station, built in the 1920s, before being uprooted and hauled south in 1996. It now serves as the southern terminus of the Kingston Flyer, that proud survivor of New Zealand’s steam age. In its heyday the Flyer was no ordinary train but a working lifeline, hauling passengers and goods along the lakeshore. When it was resurrected as a tourist service in the 1970s, its vintage engines and green-and-cream carriages drew visitors from around the world, offering them a taste of travel as it once was, unhurried, dramatic, and full of character.
Today, the Flyer runs only occasionally, a reminder of both the grandeur and difficulty of keeping steam alive in modern day Aotearoa.
One of the great things about museums is finding things you never expected. For example, you don’t expect to find a submarine 80 kilometers from the coast in a small Otago town. In fact, when you do, it feels a bit like a practical joke. There it sits, stranded in Middlemarch, a vessel that never touched the sea, looking less like a cutting-edge machine and more like a mislaid water tank – which, at one point, it actually was.
The story is simple enough: two men convinced themselves there was plenty of gold lying on the wild riverbeds of Central Otago and the best way to get at it was with a submarine. Only in New Zealand could such a thought be entertained with such seriousness. Elsewhere, there would have been committees, diagrams, and several university studies explaining why it was impossible. Here, they just built the thing.
That it didn’t work seems almost beside the point. The Platypus isn’t really a wonderful failure – it’s proof of that casual, can-do optimism that bubbles away in this country. A submarine eighty kilometres inland may not be practical, but it is gloriously, stubbornly imaginative. And somehow, standing here beside it, you can’t help but admire that more than if it had ever struck gold.
Driving into Hyde, I wasn’t expecting much more than a quiet town, a few cyclists and a scattering of houses. Then, through a break in the trees, I saw a small church with bright red doors, sitting there looking lonely and once loved. It looked almost shy, tucked among the surrounding pines, the morning light catching its stone walls in just the right way.
These are the kinds of discoveries I love most about wandering around New Zealand. You’re not searching for them; they simply appear, part of the everyday landscape. To locals, this church is just another building that has always been there. Yet, it felt like I’d stumbled across a story from another age, one where miners crowded into makeshift halls, and later, farmers scraped together enough to build something special and permanent.
There’s nothing grand about the Sacred Heart Church. No soaring spire, no rows of polished pews visible from the road. But that’s the charm. It’s modest and enduring, standing quietly among the trees, far from the bustle it once knew. And as I stood there, I couldn’t help but think: these are the moments that make road trips memorable, not the destinations you plan for, but the little surprises that simply appear.
One of the truly lovely things about driving around New Zealand is all the incidental things you come across that speak of daily life. And what’s more, to New Zealanders it’s nothing out of the ordinary, but to everyone else it’s just plain strange. At any moment you can find yourself passing honesty boxes selling fruit, vegetables, or any other manner of homegrown produce; hand-painted signs advertising horse poo for sale; or a row of second-hand lawnmowers neatly lined up at the roadside. Sometimes you’ll pass an old, weather-beaten shed that doubles as a bus stop and a meeting point, its walls scrawled with generations of initials. Other times it might be a letterbox shaped like a cow, a jet boat, or a microwave.
These small, unassuming details are what catch you off guard. They’re not staged for tourists or polished for effect. They just exist, part of the fabric of daily life – so ordinary to locals they hardly notice, yet to an outsider they feel like discoveries, the kind that make you slow down, smile, and wonder what else the road ahead might casually reveal.
Daily Photo – Carlin Creek, Jacks Point & Frankton
I returned to the car and drove along a glorious, yet winding road to Jack’s Point, a resort on the edge of Lake Wakatipu framed by the dramatic, snow-covered peaks of the Remarkables on one side and rocky tussock covered hills on the other. Driving past these mountains, I couldn’t help but think how New Zealand manages to pull off grandeur with an unconcerned casualness that suggests it couldn’t care less. Here there are cliffs and ridgelines that in any other country would be accompanied by large neon signs, a theme park and a small gift shop selling cheap nic nac’s at alarming prices. Yet in New Zealand, you get a faintly apologetic lay-by with enough space for three cars and a weather-beaten sign that says simply Scenic Reserve. It’s the understatement that gets you.
The mountains rise with a nonchalance look of indifference – dark peaks climbing skyward, capped with a magnificent sweep of white that lingers well beyond winter and deep into spring. Below, sheep graze, blissfully unaware they’ve been granted one of the finest views on earth.
And here’s the curious thing: New Zealanders will politely nod at this magnificence, then tell you that the real treat is a pie from a family run bakery just down the road. That’s the enduring charm. In a land where the scenery can reduce you to stunned silence, the locals carry on, unimpressed – somehow making it more enduring
A few minutes later I rolled into Cromwell. The town had a sluggish sort of feel, as if the mist and cloud that hung over it had become part of daily life. People wandered the streets at half pace, ambling between shops with the air of folk who had nowhere urgent to be, and no intention of getting there quickly. I steered through the historic precinct, a curious little corner where remnants of the old town survive – a fraction of what once stood here before the dam swallowed most of it, the rest now lying beneath the waters of Lake Dunstan. Crossing the bridge at Dead Man’s Point, I joined State Highway 8.
Here the lake appeared, wide and blue, holding the light in a way that made the surrounding hills and clouds seem doubled, their reflections stretching into the depths. The water had a calm stillness, broken only by the occasional ripple of a bird. Beyond the shoreline, the mountains rose, their snow-dusted tops hazy and remote, like they belonged to another world altogether. I slowed, not so much to admire the view as to let it sink in, the lake running alongside the road like a ribbon, guiding me towards Clyde.
Set yourself up in Dunedin, and you’ve got the perfect launchpad. From here, the road leads to all sorts of places – unique, surprising, and sometimes downright breathtaking. Take a day trip if or linger a little longer and stay the night. With so many locations to choose from, these spots are a great starting point and have a way of rewarding anyone who takes the time. 📸 🚗
Moeraki Village – stop and get some of the best fish n chips around. The Pigroot – experience the wonder of this other worldly landscape. The Maniototo – enjoy the wide open spaces and big skies. Sutton Salt Lake – wander around a completely unique and surreal lake. The Catlins – there are so many great walks to choose from.
Which would you visit first? 🤔
Daily Photo – Fortrose
Fortrose feels like the sort of place you stumble upon rather than arrive at. I came in from Tokanui, the road rolling gently down to where the Mataura River opens into the sea, and paused at what is proudly billed as the southern gateway to the Catlins Coastal Route. It’s a peaceful spot now, but you only need to scratch the surface to find echoes of a much busier past.
From 1834, whalers set up camp here, their station short-lived but the beginning of Fortrose’s European story. Later came sawmills, blacksmiths, and the shipping trade, the little township booming around its 200-foot jetty. At the turn of the 20th century, Fortrose was buzzing with trade, schools, and churches. Then progress, as it often does, took a sideways swipe: the railway bypassed the town in 1911, the sea lane choked with sand, and traffic drifted to larger centres. Time weathered the buildings, and Fortrose shrank into quietness.
There are reminders if you look – a memorial to the locals lost in two world wars, the wide mouth of the Mataura itself, and the sense of a place that once mattered greatly. I left heading toward Mokotua.
The risk of success and failure in business ventures across Otago in the late 19th Century aren’t better illustrated than in the tale of Mr John Harris and the so-called the Clarendon project.
Born in Deddington, England, into an aristocratic family, John Harris seemed to have always had high ambitions – after all, he could trace his lineage back to the first Earl of Clarendon. So, it’s hardly surprising that he trained in law before emigrating to Otago, where he arrived in Port Chalmers in 1850. Within a few years, he had married the daughter of one of Dunedin’s founding fathers, Captain William Cargill, and went on to hold numerous high-profile public roles. He served on the Dunedin Town Board, was elected Otago Superintendent, became captain of the Otago Light Horse Volunteers, presided over the 1865 Dunedin Exhibition, and was a University of Otago councillor. If that wasn’t enough to fulfill his illustrious pedigree, he was also considered one of Dunedin’s merchant elite and invested heavily in land – including near the town (and lake) of Waihola in what became known as the Clarendon project.
With illustrious dreams of wealth, honour and prestige, Harris purchased a large block of land at the head of Lake Waihola, subdividing it into sections that went on sale. The idea being that the town would be called Clarendon, people would snap-up the sections, he would make a substantial profit and at the same time impress the Dunedin elite. Unfortunately for Harris, he got it disastrously wrong. The sections didn’t sell, and he lost staggering £28,000 on the deal. He was declared bankrupt and imprisoned 1885 for debts owed. He died a year later, his estate was worth just a mere £100.
To call Kyeburn a settlement is stretching things a little. Technically true, geographically accurate, but a touch misleading. Look it up on the map and you’ll find it tucked along State Highway 85 in Central Otago. But drive through, and you quickly realise it’s more an idea than a town. You pass a lone house here, a weathered cemetery there, the occasional gravel driveway leading past the crumbling remains of long-abandoned buildings. And then, just when you think the land is empty, the Central Otago Rail Trail threads its way across the Maniototo – a reminder that people do, in fact, come this way, though maybe not in droves.
But that’s the delightful thing about Central Otago, and in particular the Maniototo region: it’s the lack of anything at all that makes it so wonderful. You don’t arrive in places like Lauder, Becks, Waipiata, Ranfurly, Wedderburn, or Kyeburn and immediately start looking for a Westfield Mall to get your nails done or replace your phone battery. Instead, you slow down, breathe in the crisp air, watch the light shift across the tussock, and let the quiet, wide-open spaces do their work. Kyeburn is the kind of place where you spot a track and think, “Now I wonder what’s down there,” and off you go with little more than a jersey, sturdy footwear, and an inquisitive mindset – and that’s exactly what I did.
Located approximately 220 kilometers northeast of Winton, in the heart of Central Otago is the town of Waipiata. Just like in Winton, the railways played an important part here too. But while sheep and cattle were the main animals shipped by rail through Winton, in Waipiata it was a different kind of animal that became the primary export: rabbits. Or, to be more precise, hundreds of thousands of tinned and processed rabbits.
The wide open plans of the Maniototo isn’t a native home for rabbits, but when they were introduced to it in the 1860s by European settlers, they found they liked it very much. So much in fact that the dry tussock country proved an ideal habitat, and with no natural predators their numbers exploded. Within a decade they went from being a useful food source to becoming one of Otago’s worst pests.
When the residents realised what they had done, measures were taken to control the irritant. Rabbit-proof fencing was built, poisoning was introduced, and the government passed the Rabbit Nuisance Act (1876), forcing landowners to control rabbits on their property. None of which really worked. Then, enter into the developing crises the McAdams Rabbit Factory. They took advantage of the freely available pest and began skinning the things for their pelts, and producing canned and frozen meat for export. So successful was the enterprise that a large factory was established in Waipiata to take advantage of the nearby railway. Within ten years the factory employed around 60 men and handled up to 10,000 rabbits a day.
So, thanks to the McAdams Rabbit Factory the little town of Waipiata throbbed with the noise, smell and steady industry of rabbits and the whole community got involved. All over the countryside, rabbits were trapped, gutted where they fell, and strung like bunting along wire fences waiting for a lorry from the factory to come clattering by to collect them. Once the trucks rolled up to Waipiata, the carcasses were weighed, sorted and inspected. Diseased or spoiled animals were biffed aside, the rest carried on inside where workers with sleeves rolled and knives sharp, set about the grim business of first skinning the rabbits for pelts (which it seems were worth more than the meat, bound for the hat-makers of Britain who turned New Zealand rabbits into fashionable headwear). After that, the meat would be cut down – either frozen in bulk or stewed, spiced and sealed into tins for export to places like Britain where canned rabbit was a working-class staple, cheap and plentiful.
Even the scraps weren’t wasted. Fat and offal were boiled into tallow and stock food. Blood and bones ended up as fertilizer. This was real nose to tail cooking. The finished products were then taken to the railway wagons at the nearby station, ready to take bundles of dried pelts, crates of canned stew and frozen carcasses down to Dunedin and out into the world. For a few decades, it really was an economy run on rabbits, and everyone benefitted. Then, as the great depression hit and markets slumped in the 1930s, the factory closed, leaving only its buildings and a faint whiff of memory behind.
Having spent the night in the charming town of Waipiata, I’d gone to bed reading about the efficient operation of the once nearby factory. The next morning, standing in the frosty air, my toes curled against the cold rising from the ground, I tried to imagine the dawn-to-dusk hum of industry, or the smell that must have hung over the town in the heat of late summer, attracting thousands of flies. It was hard to picture – the town seemed so peaceful, still, and sedate.
When I was younger, visiting places like this always puzzled me. My nine-year-old self couldn’t fathom why anyone would live here. There was no Pizza Hut, movie theatre, or swimming pool. No playground, BMX track, or local sports team to follow. No shops selling ice creams or lollies. Not much of anything really. Yet forty years later, standing in a frozen field, hoping my car had defrosted, I found I could have easily stayed a few more days. I’d wander on longer walks, sit and read, photograph the surrounding scenery, and get to know the locals over a beer. I could even check whether rabbit was on the menu – “Oh bother,” I muttered to myself, realizing I’d forgotten to check. Oh well. I’d do that next time. There would be a next time, that much I was certain of.
The last time I was in Winton, I arrived late in the afternoon. I found my accommodation, had a couple of beers, was declined as a solo-entry to a team quiz night, had tea and slept reasonably well, In the morning I checked-out, went for a walk and headed for the town of Limehills.
The funny thing about Winton is that while State Highway 6 runs directly through the middle of town, the west side is packed in with shops, houses, and all the busy stuff, while the east side looks like it started with good intentions, put up a few shops, and then quietly gave up. At first glance it feels like an odd way to arrange a town, but really it all comes down to the trains.
Back when the railways were snaking their way across Otago and Southland, Winton found itself sitting neatly at a junction. People, freight, stock, and opportunity rattled in and out of town on a daily basis. The railway was Winton’s beating heart, and right alongside the tracks sprang up the shops, banks, pubs, and services that gave the place its sense of being a proper wee hub. For a while, it worked brilliantly.
The trouble with railways, of course, is that once they stop being useful, they have a habit of disappearing altogether. The trains slowed, then stopped, the tracks were ripped up, and the land became something else entirely. What remains is this slightly lopsided arrangement: the west side bustling and snug, the east side stretched into parks, gardens, memorials, and wide community spaces where the train corridor used to be. It gives the place a kind of balance, half busy little town – half wide-open space which, in its own way, feels rather fitting for Southland.
The strange thing about all of this, is that not an awful lot is known about old James Kirkton at all. Very little is known about his personal life, history, or what became of him after he spotted that yellow flake of gold among the black sand. It’s almost as if he disappeared in the annals of time completely. What we do know is that his discovery started a boom town that in its day, peaked with a population of some 3000 residents. As the town grew more services were required and so more buildings were added till eventually the residents of Orepuki could proudly boast about their hotels, banks, schools, churches, a courthouse, police station, jail, railway station, community hall, general store and any other establishment you might expect to find in an upstanding, populous rural town that had recently experienced a surge in rapid urbanization.
Over time, more industries sprang up – a sawmill, coal mine, shale works, smelter, flax mill, and of course, farming. It all looked promising for a while, but the problem with non-renewable materials is that eventually they run out, and run-out they did. The gold disappeared, the coal seams thinned, the mills and mines shut their doors, the trains stopped running, and people drifted off to find work elsewhere. I guess if you weren’t a farmer there wasn’t much reason to stay.
As the slow decline in population in Orepuki rolled over, year after year – before leaving – former residents did one very thoughtful thing. They left many of the buildings to simply stand and battle the elements, creating what is known as a semi-ghost town. That’s not to say the place feels abandoned, or that the people who remain are unhappy. Very far from it. I’m sure they like the place very much. Like most small New Zealand towns, Orepuki has a quiet, rural rhythm, with locals going about their daily business at an unhurried pace. There’s a pub, a bowling green, a community hall, and a rural fire service – all the essentials, really.
Today, Orepuki has a population of around 100 residents and as I drove through the town I could help but enjoy myself in a peculiar, I don’t know why sort of way. I stopped and looked at the old buildings that stood – the General Merchant Store and the Drapers and Clothes Store, I visited the Orepuki War Memorial Gates and followed Oldham Street to where it ended abruptly, as if someone had simply run out of tarseal one afternoon and decided to call it a day. I weighed up whether to use the public toilets, debated if I had time to detour to Gemstone Beach, and eventually, on my fourth lap of Dover Street, concluded that I’d probably seen most of what Orepuki had to offer without playing a game of bowls, venturing into the pub, or down to the sand. So, with a sense of modest achievement, I eased the car back onto State Highway 99 and set off, in what I assumed was a southwest direction.
In the year of 1865, on the black sands of a Southland beach, an Australian prospector spotted something among the stones, shells and sand at his feet that seemed oddly out of place. It was soft, dense, and if he had exposed it to heat it wouldn’t have tarnished, rusted, or corroded. In fact, if he had heated it up to 1,064°C (1,947°F), he could have watched it melt and made it into a nice ring or necklace. The man’s name was James Kirkton, and what he’d discovered was gold. While there can be no-doubt that Kirkton would’ve got awfully excited by his discovery, unlike other gold finds around the country, his didn’t lead to an instant influx of lawless yobs who had forgotten all common sense in the search for fame and fortune on the country’s gold fields. Very far from it – Kirkton’s discovery was unique in that the gold was very fine, difficult to extract, and access to the area was extremely limited.
Needless to say, as tends to happen in these situations, word eventually spread about Kirkton’s find, and prospectors starting flooding the area with tents and other portable makeshift dwellings. Thus a small town they called Hirstfield was born. For the next two decades or so, things went well for the town of Hirstfield, so much so that permanent establishments were added to the landscape and the population steadily grew. While all this was going on, a few kilometers inland, among the surrounding hills and gullies, a pocket of alluvial gold was discovered, and once again the cycle repeated itself. Everyone went absolutely bonkers and scrambled to the new location, desperate to get a piece of the action. This meant, by 1882 a second township not too far away had been created – this time called Garfield. The problem with this hurriedly erected metropolis was that nobody stopped to think where the gold actually was, and the miners soon realized that the valuable vein of gold ran directly underneath the town. Faced with a curly predicament, the residents took a vote and decided upon the only rational course of action, they’d move the town back to Hirstfield. So, in what must have been a logistical nightmare, a grand display of community spirit and a lesson in motivation, by 1885 the entire town had moved – school, community hall, hotel, houses, tables, chairs, pots, pans, Mrs. Higgins’s three prize-winning hydrangeas – everything had been taken back to where they started – Hirstfield.
The year of 1885 proved to be an important milestone in our story, not only had the residents of Garfield returned to Hirstfield with their tails between their legs, but the arrival of the railway in the area cemented the merged towns as a permanent location. Now, as we all know, a new town needs a new name, and instead of choosing to name it after some British aristocrat who didn’t know where the hell New Zealand was, or have any idea that the lower South Island even existed, they did a remarkably sensible thing – they turned to local Māori for inspiration and called the new town Orepuki.
Question: What happened to the Owaka gunpowder factory?
Answer: it blew up!
Back in the mid to late 1800s, the Owaka region had become a popular spot. This was mainly thanks to the whaling and sealing industries, which the Europeans had discovered provided rather useful oil and fur. Once that industry died away, attention quickly turned to the surrounding native forests and a sawmilling industry was established to supply timber to the growing settlement of Dunedin. By the 1870s and 1880s, the farming trade was on the rise and more bush was cleared, meaning the town of Owaka became the hub for supplies, trade, and services in the district. As the population grew, services were added like a post office in 1867, a telegraph office arrived in 1879, a bank in 1880 and a gunpowder factory by 1880 – I kid you not!
These days, a gunpowder factory in the small settlement of Owaka seems quite absurd, but when put into context it is actually rather clever. You see, the factory supplied gunpowder to the timber trade, who used it to split the wood, which was then shipped off to other centres.
The factory came to life around 1880 when Englishman John Mackley and a Swedish-born chemist C.G.V. Leijon founded Mackley and Leijon’s Owake Mills Tower Proof Gunpowder – and doesn’t that name have a ring to it! The pair were quickly successful in the new enterprise, gaining a medal at the New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch in 1882. With the product proving popular throughout the region, they located their factory near the Owaka River (about 1.5km from the current town centre), so a log dam could provide water to drive the factory’s grinder. This then processed Hinahina Wood which was used to create charcoal, one of the main ingredients of gunpowder when mixed with sulfur and saltpetre. The powder was then sent to the milling industry and exported around the region for other uses. That was, until the factory exploded – on three separate occasions none the less, until its closure in 1884. The final blast was so impressive that it completely destroyed the factory and was heard almost 40 kilometers away in the neighboring town of Kaitangata. The factory wasn’t rebuilt, thus ending the Mackley and Leijon’s Owake Mills Tower Proof Gunpowder business.
Arthur Strange Reserve sits on the northern side of the Clutha River, just before you cross the Balclutha Bridge and enter the town itself. I wanted to like Balclutha, I really did. It’s the gateway to the south after all, with the mighty Clutha River – the largest by volume in New Zealand – flowing right through its heart. But on the day I arrived, the town wasn’t showing me its best side. A grey blanket of cloud hung low, pressing down over the streets. The river ran high and heavy beneath the bridge, its wide surface reflecting the same dark and moody tone that lingered in the sky above.
Just for second, imagine beginning inside this iron tube. Eight men wedged in this space, the clank of shafts, the hiss of pumps, the smoke of oil lamps, an air supply slipping away through a leaking valve, insufficient pressure to expel water, all the while waiting to find out if the contraption will rise back up to the surface. Standing here today, I could help but think volunteering to go in such a thing lands somewhere between absurd and heroic.
Oturehua is in the Ida Valley and I found myself ten minutes after leaving town detouring onto Coal Pit Road near Idaburn, before eventually heading for Waipiata by way of Wedderburn and Ranfurly. The Hawkdun Ranges were keeping me company out of the left-hand window, stretching up into the vast blue sky, covered in a magnificent sweep of white – a clear sign of winter lingering a while yet.
At Lake Hayes, I had pulled over to escape the steady stream of traffic heading to and from Frankton and Queenstown in one direction, and the Gibbston Valley, Kawarau Gorge, and Cromwell in the other. The water was still, a smooth, glassy surface reflecting the peaks of the surrounding mountains, indifferent to the human chaos behind me. Yet even here, it was impossible to ignore the changes to the Queenstown-Lakes District.
In my day Frankton was a separate settlement from Queenstown, on the drive you’d pass through Frankton, a motel famously made out of bottles, trees, mountains and views of the lake. Eventually, you’d spot the Skyline Gondola high on the mountain side, then Queenstown itself. Nowadays, Frankton is a suburb of Queenstown, with the drive being a slow procession of cars, boats, trailers, trucks and campervans passing an endless stream of motels, hotels, houses and lifestyle blocks where majestic views of the lake used to be. When people buy property or develop land, I don’t think the environment comes into it very much. The focus seems to be on capitalising on the property boom and gaining resource consent than maintaining the natural environment. When a study into population growth in the area was carried out it found that between 2013 and 2018, the population jumped from 28,224 to 39,153 – a startling 39% increase. It was then carried out again in 2024 where it had climbed again to 52,400. That’s a staggering population increase of nearly 25,000. I would scarcely have believed these figures, I had not seen the ongoing development for myself. Driving from Frankton to Lake Hayes, the road passed new subdivisions, rooftops, and roads that seemed to sprout suddenly from nowhere. How do people look at all this development and still see the charm that made people fall in love with the place? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it’s a mix of necessity and ambition – more people, more houses, more infrastructure, more money to be made. For all I know, developers are trying their best, but it often feels like all the development is spoiling the very scenery people are coming to see.
What I can tell you is that having driven through the area, you spend more time looking at the scenery than being in it. Yet, amid the chaos, the landscape remains a spectacular draw for people around the world. If only they left footprints, not foundations.
I left Owaka coffee-less. Instead, a short time later I lingered at an old pier I found that was jutting out across the water toward the upper estuary of the Catlins River, something far more peaceful and rewarding. I was following the Southern Scenic Route through The Catlins, a drive of wondrous beauty, with timeless and almost mystical overtones and having left Owaka, I was now heading deep to the region.
Having explored the pier, I’d left it, rejoined the road and it wasn’t long before I reached the Catlins River Bridge, which I crossed before spotting a sign that read “Purakanui Falls.” For a moment, I considered turning left onto Purakanui Falls Road and heading for the falls which are located at the end of a rather pleasant bush walk.. It was tempting, very tempting, but I didn’t have the time.
For the next twenty minutes, I continued along the Papatowai Highway toward Papatowai, following the Catlins River and the nearby gullies, still holding remnants of native bush: rimu, tōtara, kahikatea, and southern rātā – much of it felled for timber or cleared for farmland in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
By the time John Corcoran pulled his train into the Ranfurly Station, it was already an hour late. Scheduled to arrive at 2:30 a.m, it wasn’t until 3:30 a.m. that the train finally ended its run for the day. With trains running to tight schedules and a shortage of experienced engine drivers, crews were often pushed hard while a lack of track maintenance had left the line in poor condition. Whenever they did get downtime, it was vital to rest properly so they could remain alert and able to work at full capacity – despite the hectic rosters. John Corcoran was no exception.
That Friday morning in June was particularly cold, with a heavy frost covering much of the Strath Taieri. The temperature barely rose above 3 or 4 degrees, and the hard frost lingered well into the day. Earlier, Corcoran had brought a goods train from Dunedin, arriving in Ranfurly an hour late at 3:30 a.m. He signed off duty and walked to the Ranfurly Hotel, where he had a room booked. He rose by 10:30 a.m, had a drink with an old friend in the hotel bar, ate a pie for lunch, and then walked the short distance to the station to take charge of the Ab782 for the homeward run to Dunedin. The train left Ranfurly ten minutes late, at 12:48 p.m.
By then, Corcoran had been off duty for a little more than nine hours. In that time, he had managed less than six hours’ sleep, had a drink at the hotel with a friend, eaten a pie for lunch, and was now under pressure to ensure his train – already late leaving – arrived in Dunedin on time on a line that was in poor condition. Later that day, passengers who survived reported that the train had seemed to be travelling much faster than usual, lurching violently from side to side. At 1:45 p.m, at a bend known as Straw Cutting, the train derailed at excessive speed, killing 21 people.
Help from Dunedin would take time. In 1943, the road from Outram through the Strath Taieri to Middlemarch and Hyde was narrow, unsealed, and still followed the winding course of the old bullock wagon trails. Any motorised assistance faced a long, difficult journey, bumping over rough roads in the dark before reaching the scene.
That left those at the scene or nearby needing to act quickly. Members of the Gimmerburn Football Team, travelling in one of the rear carriages, rushed to help where they could. The Maniototo Battalion of the Home Guard from Ranfurly was mobilized at 2 p.m. and were also among the first on the scene. Doctors and nurses from Middlemarch, Ranfurly, and Waipiata soon arrived to assist. In the days that followed, local hotels in Hyde and Middlemarch kept extended hours and exhausted local supplies providing blankets, meals, and accommodation for rescuers and railway workers who laboured to clear and repair the track.
Following the disaster, the derailment was proven to have been brought about by excessive speed and lack of judgement on the part of a tired driver who had had little sleep and inadequate food during the previous 24 hours. Yet, it seems a little striking and hard on Corcoran that nothing was said about the tight scheduling, the lack of adequate rest between shifts, or the poor condition of the track itself.
At the time, it was New Zealand’s worst railway disaster.
From Mosgiel, I passed through East Taieri and Allanton before going some kilometres out of my way to take the scenic road alongside the Taieri River to the small settlement of Henley, which was picturesque in its own unique way. It wasn’t scenic like Milford Sound in Fiordland or the Great Ocean Road in Australia, but carried its own beauty in a slow, overcast winter’s day kind of way. Like many small towns in New Zealand, Henley carried its own quiet version of charm.
I stood on the side of the Ida Valley-Omakau Road, where the last of a recent snowfall lay dissolving into slush beneath my feet. Before me, stretched the flat farmlands of the valley, sheep scattered across the fields, looking for the remains of the winter feed. Beyond them, Hawkdun Ranges rose in a sweep of white, snow tumbling down their edges. It was one of those moments when the Ida Valley felt caught between two seasons, winter reluctantly loosening its grip, spring waiting just around the corner.
Before I left home on this trip, I’d decided that when I returned, it would be an ideal opportunity to look at Dunedin from a different perspective, to view the city as a tourist might. So, when the hills of the peninsula eventually came into view, with the harbour stretching out into the distance and the city centre neatly tucked on the far shore, I paused to breathe in the fresh, salty sea air and the familiar, distinctive coastline. I quickly discovered that I’d set myself an impossible task – I was far too invested. You see, having called Dunedin home for 98% of my life, I couldn’t look at it any other way. It was home.
Still, not wanting to give up completely on the task I’d set myself, I had a flip through a few well-known travel guides to gain a foreigner’s perspective, an honest attempt to see the place through a different set of eyes, if you will. Eventually, after much reading (and let’s be honest here, most travel guides are pretty dull) and a few false starts, I was able to cobble together some kind of semi-coherent consensus. The overall opinion seemed to be that Dunedin is a place where history, creativity, and nature meet. With its heritage architecture, lively arts scene, and easily accessible wilderness, it comes across as charming, quirky, and environmentally blessed. Added to which Dunedin is a UNESCO City of Literature, and in the heart of the Octagon you can even follow a literacy walk, stopping at plaques commemorating writers of note and literary milestones.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against these publications; they are, in fact, very useful. I’ve even used one myself in a moment of poor judgement and indecision. It’s just that you could easily apply that description to almost any major city in the world – some minor cities as well, come to think of it. What I wanted was something unique, something you couldn’t say about any other city in the world. Then, just when I was about to give up, just when I was thinking Dunedin would fall into the vast well of nondescript cities, I happened to stumble across notable New Zealand poet Peter Olds and a quote that I absolutely love when he so eloquently said: “I fell flat on my face, drunk in the Octagon: right on top of a plaque with my name on.” There, in that single unvarnished sentence, Dunedin is captured quite beautifully.
… from a Small City. My daily musings from Ōtepoti to get you inspired. Read the blog, view the photos, embrace the creativity.
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