Crean's CountryThe Press
Last updated 16:41 02/05/2008

MIKE CREAN/The Press

Fields of green: one of the many abandoned farmhouses around Katea, near Owaka, in the Catlins.

The Catlins is one of New Zealand's most beautiful but remote areas, the rugged region at the bottom right-hand corner of the South Island, near a coast of big surf and shipwrecks.
Jessie Coote milked cows by hand as a child. Her stool was a tomato box, her pail a honey tin. It was in the Depression. It was in the Catlins. All five children helped with milking while their dad cleared bush on the 50-hectare block.
"They were tough times, but happy times," she says. "Everyone strived on very little. Everyone supported everyone else. Old friends were never forgotten."
Only in the past three years was the sealing of the Catlins highway, from Balclutha to Invercargill, completed. Now the area is growing in popularity. But when people tell me they have "done" the Catlins, I shudder. Many just drive the highway, about a two-hour trip. They miss most of what the area has to offer.
You could live in the Catlins for years and still discover things about it. Better to stay a few days and visit interesting features: from waterfall bush walks to seaside rock formations.
The ideal starting point is the Owaka Information Centre and Museum. I know of no town of similar size with a better museum and more helpful staff. With fewer than 400 people, Owaka is the Catlins' main settlement. It offers all necessary services and accommodation, half an hour south of Balclutha.
My first excursion through the Catlins, in 1971, was an adventure. The road was gravelled all the way and our Mini juddered in corrugations, slewed in shingle and grunted on the hills. We made the round trip from home in Mataura in little less than nine hours.
The call of the wild, the grandeur, solitude and rugged beauty, the pathos of abandoned buildings showing where the human spirit had withered in unequal battles with nature, drew us back again and again.
Each time we returned, we found a bit more of the road was sealed, although side roads remained rough. Even now, back roads remain gravelled, but better maintained than years ago.
On a mild autumn morning, I leave Balclutha and head south again. A friend has suggested exploring the Katea Valley, so, nearing Owaka, I turn right into Hunt Road and start a gentle climb. Soon I am deep into territory that Coote calls home.
The valley is fringed by rolling hills where light-green pastures and patches of deep-green bush form a patchwork. Beef cattle and sheep graze, never far from native trees.
Along the way are empty houses. They look as if families have just walked out and left paint to fade, iron to rust. They are wrapped in eternal embrace by straggly fruit trees and unruly hedges.
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Some date back a century, perhaps abandoned by settlers wearied of clearing bush or unable to service mortgages. Others are from recent decades, when, Coote says, a few farmers bought neighbours' properties to enlarge their holdings and make them economic.
After the road crosses a low saddle, the landscape changes dramatically. Rounded hills make way for tall, sharp, conical-shaped peaks, with tussock slopes replacing lush pastures, with trees leaning away from the prevailing southerly winds.
At Purekireki, signs of a lost settlement persist. The bell from the Presbyterian Church that stood for a century until 1998 hangs under a shelter, next to the gaunt community hall. Picket fences, iron gates and belts of trees show where families once lived.
The road to the right leads through back country towards Clinton on Highway 1. I turn left and drive the 20km through pleasant farmland to Owaka.
It is sparsely populated now, but Coote tells me Katea, halfway up her valley, once had a school and a dairy factory. If she was lucky, she could hitch a ride on her father's dray when he took the milk to the factory. There she could catch a ride with another farmer to get to school. Coming home, she sometimes caught a lift on the mail truck. Otherwise, it was a long walk.
She left school aged 15 and went to work in one of Owaka's three grocery stores. "Owaka was abuzz, with sale day every second Thursday and stock driven down the roads. No lorries then. People came from as far as Tahakopa by train for shopping and banking. There were three banks and a Post Office."
The telephone arrived in 1943 and Coote rang 90 families up the Katea Valley each week to take orders for the store's delivery service.
Ninety families then -- about 19 now. Sawmills closed, workers moved away. Roads improved, people took their business to Balclutha.
Owaka went into hibernation. The influx of tourists "doing the Catlins" is its rousing call.