Ever wanted to know what it’s like at the far end of New Zealand’s south island? We did. But it wasn’t anything like what we anticipated.

 

Driving south:

We drove south, away from the town of Invercargill. First along a straight road, and then along curving roads, where necessary to avoid the bay inlets.

 

The roads weren’t busy. And at times I noticed built up dyke-type ridges. Presuming that was because of the flat lowlands and the need of protection from the sea inlets. It wasn’t a place you would normally see houses, shops or tall large city buildings. 

At lands-end there’s a reserve:

It’s called Motupohue Scenic Reserve. And standing on top of a hill within the reserve, there is a spiral tower. The tower is called Bluff Hill lookout. To get to it, you have to take Flagstaff Road, which starts within the village area of Bluff, Southland district. 

Parking our cars we discovered the lookout tower, just above the parking area. 

Putting on warm climbed the tower. It was built in the design of spiral shell. No steps, just a slopping alleyway that wound up and around the tower. Up and around you wind, ever higher and higher, until you reach the top. 

At the top of the spiral Tower:

And there at the top we found an open viewing area, that you could look out over the land and sea. Panaromically we could see for miles and miles all round. We could see far out because the weather wasn’t misty or cloudy. Here are some photos I’ve linked so you can see what we saw:

This is the view East and South from the tower.

That was a stitched together inland view. And the bottom photo shows the smooth stone in-scripted panel, on the bottom right-hand side.

Then when we looked down at the rock balustrade-wall surrounding us, we noticed a description of the surrounding view. It was encrypted in a smooth stone surface. The stone panel ran right around on top of the rock wall.   

It was simply engraved with neat drawings and outlines of notable hills, valley, islands, etc. How cool was that! 

The fun part:

Someone had done this especially for tourists to recognize their surroundings. New Zealanders are very clever. They know how to please their tourists and make your trip fascinating and ever so memorable. 

Straight away everyone was running their fingers along the engravings and checking up with the surrounding view. It was a lot of fun to see if you could recognize things and where they were actually placed in the surrounding view. 

I was so taken in with this that I didn’t notice straight away that the rest of our family had left the top of the lookout point. So I had to hurry and scurry down to catch up with them.  

After leaving the tower, we drove around to Stirling Point, on the south or sea side of the bluff. Where we found the road had ended with a… 

Signpost pointing in all directions!

It looked so top heavy in that open concrete paved space, with a glass balustrade on the seaboard side. 

Naturally tourist would want to stand for photos under all those placards signs, just to prove they were there too, at the very tip of New Zealand! 

We found the area was designed especially for tourists. Besides toilets, there was also a winding pathway along the coastline edge, that one could spend time wondering along it peacefully enjoying the surrounding nature and look out to sea. 

Feeling I needed some personal space, I quietly separated myself from the crowd. And because I like adventuring, I wondered down this pathway in the hope of getting some really wonderful photos. And I wasn’t disappointed! Here are some of the photos I managed to get.

 

A surprise at the end of the pathway!

What surprised me though was that there were houses here. In the photos you can see some. But I’m sorry now, that I didn’t take photos of those that were closer to the seashore at the end of the path.  

The reason I was so surprised was that this place seemed so far from the `maddening crowd’ in such a God forsaken place, and subject to all weathers from the South Pole! I suppose if you lived in places like that all your life, you got used to it!