To Dunedin via McLean Falls, Purakaunui Falls & Nugget Point Lighthouse

Leaving Queenstown this morning was tough, we’ve really come to like it here, there’s so much to do and such beautiful scenery around you. We could definitely stay here a lot longer. However our plan today was to head to the Southern tip of the South Island, the Nugget Point Lighthouse, via a few waterfalls (because we love waterfalls). Amelia emailed Top10, the holiday park company, about how good the customer service has been at the Queenstown branch as they’ve been absolutely great, I would highly recommend. 

McLean Falls

Heading down the same way we’d gone to Milford Sound, with Lake Wakatipu on our right and up the Devils Staircase, we had a 3-4 hour drive ahead of us before getting to the Caitlin national park and our first waterfall, McLean falls. As soon as we parked up the rain started with a vengeance after been sunny for pretty much the entire drive thus far. We had our lunch in the van hoping for it to blow over, and much to our surprise and delight, it did! We had pretty much sun all afternoon until we were driving into Dunedin this evening. Very lucky. The McLean falls were a 20 minute walk through a rainforest track (pretty) and are a series of stepped rock formations creating a waterfall. Very nice indeed. 

Purakaunui Falls

Back on the gravel road (35% of New Zealand’s roads are un-made roads, great nugget of trivia) and, with a few phone/satnav issues, we made it to Purakaunui Falls. These are more photogenic but I actually preferred the McLean falls, they just seemed to have more character and personality. Most of the viewing platform was taken up by a small baby and mother, but managing to squeeze past them you could get a pretty good view and some great photos.

Nugget Point

My phone had been playing up all day and just not working as a satnav so we almost had to do it the old fashioned way from Purakaunui Falls to the Nugget Point Lighthouse, and consult a map (still on our phones obviously, haven’t seen a map on paper in years). Fortunately Amelia’s phone worked so we made it over to Nugget without a hitch. The Lighthouse isn’t anything special, just a very squat, functional little tower on a peninsula, but the scenery around it is obviously beautiful and the views along the coastline pretty great. We could also see the weather rolling in from the North. It was obviously going to be a very wet last drive of the day.

Nugget Point Lighthouse

We had planned to stay close to Nugget Point tonight, but I felt fine to drive for a while longer so, to cut down the driving time tomorrow and actually have a chance to see a bit of Dunedin itself, we headed over to the Top10 holiday park in Dunedin. We still haven’t cheated on Top10, they’ve done us very well thus far (and making the most of our membership discount). We just had our customary soup and a roll (if it’s not a barbecue it’s soup and a roll), and heading to bed shortly, I’m tired and didn’t sleep well last night after the overdose of sugar yesterday.