Drhoz and Purrdence’s NZ Trip 2025-2026 : Owaka and Cathedral Caves
The Catlins is a roughly 100km stretch of coastline at the very southern corner of the South Island, prone to wild weather, and first settled around 1350 AD. European industry is mostly limited to farming and tourism, these days, after the whaling, sealing, and sawmill market collapsed. Flooding changing river courses and silting up one of the few usable harbours didn't help. These days the population of the entire area is about 3750 but increases in summer.
We stayed in Owaka, the largest town in the district, in a holiday lodge that used to be a hospital when it was built 100 years ago. It certainly still has architecture of one.
Owaka also has a rather nice little museum, covering the history of the area, the many appalling shipwrecks, and detailing such local characters as Thomas Chasland (or Chaseland, Chaseling or Chasling - it's not like he knew how to spell it).
Chasland was possibly born in 1802 in Australia, but became famous in New Zealand for among other things harpooning 11 whales in 17 days. His employers were actually rather annoyed by this since the whaling station didn't have enough barrels for a catch that size, and most of it went to waste.
One of the coastal landmarks is a headland named Chasland's Mistake, but history is unclear on what the mistake was - either mistaking it for another headland when he was supposed to be guiding an American whaling ship to harbour, or leading a sealing party ashore and getting blamed when the seals stampeded into the sea. A third possibility is that he found the seals, didn't have the neccesary salt to preserve the skins, and by the time he got back there the news had already leaked and the colony exterminated.
He died on Stewart Island in 1869 (maybe) probably to the profound relief of all the local whales and seals.
And despite stopping at Kaka Point, Nugget Point and Pounawea on the way, we arrived early enough that I persuaded Purrdence that we should drive down to Cathedral Caves before it got dark - and it's just as well we did, since the caves are only accessible at low tide and we were at the end of the cycle when they'd be open.
The entrance of one of the seacaves, with Chasland's Mistake visible over on the far side of the bay.
The walk down to the beach was through dense coastal rainforest, but we couldn't stop - not only did we have to get to the caves before the tide came back in, the moment we stopped moving the sandflies showed up.
Austrosimulium sp. This one I let bite me, so i could get a photo, but by the 100th my mercy was entirely expended. They were unbelievably worse over in Fiordland. I'll cover them in more detail there.
The seacaves are some of the longest in the world, at just shy of 200m long, but that length is mostly due to it being two seacaves that meet at a sharp angle deep inside the cliff. They've been carved out of the Jurassic sandstone by the Pacific surf, which regularly exceeds 5m swell.
A small entry charge for use of the access road is managed by Kāi Tahu descendants.
