Explore Christchurch and south to Otago
Heading south from Christchurch, SH1 forges straight across the Canterbury Plains connecting small farming service towns. Aside from the occasionally magnificent views of the snowcapped Southern Alps to the west, the drive south is through a monotonous landscape broken only by the broad gravel beds of braided rivers, usually little more than a trickle spanned by a kilometre-long bridge.
As the road passes the pottery town of Temuka and reaches the southern end of the Canterbury Plains, hills force it back to the shoreline at mundane Timaru. From here, SH8 strikes inland towards Fairlie, Lake Tekapo and Aoraki Mount Cook.
The coastal highway continues south through rolling hills to the architecturally harmonious city of Oamaru, and the unique and fascinating Moeraki Boulders. This is penguin country, with several opportunities to stop off and spy blue and yellow-eyed penguins. From Moeraki there is little to delay you on your progress toward Dunedin, except maybe the small crossroads town of Palmerston, where SH85, “The Pigroot” to Central Otago, leaves SH1, providing another opportunity to forsake the coast and follow a historical pathway to the now defunct goldfields inland.
Read More-
Timaru
Timaru
The 28,000-strong port city of TIMARU, 18km south of Temuka, is at the end of a straight and flat two-hour drive from Christchurch. The city isn’t a vastly compelling place to stop, though it’s enlivened by the new Te Ana Maori Rock Art Centre, the Aigantighe Art Gallery and the South Canterbury Museum. On a fine day, it’s worth spending a quiet hour ambling around the Botanical Gardens, entered via Queen Street (daily 8am–dusk; free), or strolling along the new boardwalk along Caroline Bay and the low cliffs north past the wooden 1878 Blackett’s Lighthouse to Dashing Rocks.
Brief history
The name Timaru comes from Te Maru, Maori for “place of shelter”, as it provided the only haven for waka paddling between Banks Peninsula and Oamaru. In 1837 European settlement was initiated by Joseph Price, who set up a whaling station south of the present city at Patiti Point. A large part of today’s commercial and pastoral development was initiated by Yorkshiremen George and Robert Rhodes, who established the first cattle station on the South Island in 1839 and effectively founded Timaru. Land reclamation created a harbour in 1877 and helped form the fine sandy beach of Caroline Bay. For a time, Timaru became a popular seaside resort, and its annual two-week summer carnival, starting on Boxing Day, is still a highlight.
-
Oamaru
Oamaru
The former port town of OAMARU, 85km south of Timaru, is one of New Zealand’s most alluring provincial cities, and a relaxed place to spend a day or two. The most immediate attraction is the presence of both blue and yellow-eyed penguin colonies on the outskirts of town, but the town itself has a well-preserved Historic District, a core of nineteenth-century buildings built of the distinctive cream-coloured local limestone that earned Oamaru the title “The Whitestone City”. At the turn of the twentieth century it had a reputation as being the most attractive city in the South Island – a status it’s regaining thanks to ongoing restoration.
The best times to visit Oamaru are from November to January when penguins are in their greatest numbers, and for the Victorian Heritage Celebrations over the third weekend in November when the streets of the historic district become a racetrack for penny-farthings, cheered on by local residents in Victorian attire.
Brief history
The limestone outcrops throughout the area once provided shelter for Maori and later the raw material for ambitious European builders. As a commercial centre for gold-rush prospectors, and shored up by quarrying, timber and farming industries, Oamaru grew prosperous. The port opened for migration in 1874, although many ships foundered on the hostile coastline and in the late nineteenth century wrecks littered the shore. After this boom period Oamaru declined, times evocatively recorded in work by local writer Janet Frame. It’s only in recent years that the town has begun to come alive again.
-
Moeraki Boulders
Moeraki Boulders
The large, grey spherical Moeraki Boulders (some almost 2m in diameter) lie partially submerged in the sandy beach at the tide line, about 2km before you hit Moeraki village. Their smooth skins hide honeycomb centres, which are revealed in some of the broken specimens. The boulders once lay deep in the mudstone cliffs behind the beach and, as these were eroded, out fell the smooth boulders, with further erosion exposing a network of surface veins. The boulders were originally formed around a central core of carbonate of lime crystals that attracted minerals from their surroundings – a process that started sixty million years ago, when muddy sediment containing shell and plant fragments accumulated on the sea floor. They range in size from small pellets to large round rocks, though the smaller ones have all been taken over the years, leaving only those too heavy to shift.
Maori named the boulders Te Kaihinaki (food baskets), believing them to have been washed ashore from the wreck of a canoe whose occupants were seeking pounamu. The seaward reef near Shag Point was the hull of the canoe, and just beyond it stands a prominent rock, the vessel’s petrified navigator. Some of the Moeraki Boulders were hinaki (baskets), the more spherical were water-carrying gourds and the irregular-shaped rocks farther down the beach were kumara from the canoe’s food store. The survivors among the crew were transformed at daybreak into hills overlooking the beach.
-
Maori rock art
Maori rock art
Around five hundred years ago, Maori moa hunters visited the South Canterbury and North Otago coastal plain, leaving a record of their sojourn on the walls and ceilings of open-sided limestone rock shelters. There are more than three hundred rock drawings around Timaru, Geraldine and Fairlie; the faded charcoal and red ochre drawings depict a variety of stylized human, bird and mythological figures and patterns. The best of the cave drawings can be seen in the region’s museums, notably Timaru’s new Te Ana Maori Rock Art Centre and the North Otago Museum in Oamaru. Around 95 percent of those remaining in situ are on private land and are often hard to make out, and what is visible is often the misguided result of nineteenth-century repainting. The best destination is Frenchman’s Gully, where moa and a stylized birdman figure can be seen. Contact the Te Ana Maori Rock Art Centre for guided tours.
-
Oamaru whitestone
Oamaru whitestone
The key to Oamaru’s distinctive look is whitestone, a “free stone” which is easily worked with metal hand tools when freshly quarried but hardens with exposure to the elements. While keeping the prevailing Neoclassical fashion firmly in mind, the architects’ imaginations ran riot, producing deeply fluted pilasters, finely detailed pediments and elegant Corinthian pillars topped with veritable forests of acanthus leaves. Oamaru was given much of its character by architect R.A. Lawson and by the firm Forrester and Lemon who together produced most of the more accomplished buildings between 1871 and 1883. Oamaru stone is still used in modern buildings such as the Waitaki Aquatic Centre in Takaro Park. Enthusiasts can visit the source of Oamaru stone at the Parkside Quarry (woamarustone.co.nz), 7km west of town.
-
Blue penguins
Blue penguins
Blue penguins, the smallest of their kind, are found all around the coast of New Zealand, and along the shores of southern Australia, where they are known as little penguins. White on their chests and bellies, they have a thick head-to-tail streak along their back in iridescent indigo-blue. Breeding takes place from May to January, and the parents take it in turns to stay with the eggs during the 36-day incubation period. The newly hatched chicks are protected for the first two or three weeks before both parents go out to sea to meet the increasing demand for food, returning full of fish, which they regurgitate into the chick’s mouth. At eight weeks the chicks begin to fledge, but sixty percent die in their first year; the juveniles that do survive usually return to their birthplace. At the end of the breeding season the birds fatten up before coming ashore to moult: over the next three weeks their feathers are not waterproof enough for them to take to the sea and they lose up to half their bodyweight.
