Enjoy a Southland road trip with family. Photo / Tim Roxborogh
Tim Roxborogh reflects on his family road trip to Southland, with plenty of activities to satisfy every passenger, both little and large.
I’m calling it now: seeing my 3-year-old daughter Riley tear up the dance floor at Milford Sound Lodge on New Year’s Eve isn’t ever vacating its prime real estate in my brain. We were halfway through a Southland road trip and Milford Sound somehow felt both at the ends of the earth as well as at the centre of what this planet should still be. And right there dominating proceedings was little Riley Roxborogh.
And this isn’t just natural parental bias at play because, for a time, Riley was the only one on her feet. Everybody else was parked at banquet tables buckling under the weight of a feast for the ages. The kind of feast where you realise a towering plateful too late what you thought were the mains are only the entrees and there are still at least two courses to go.
Pio Pio Restaurant at Milford Sound Lodge is special any night of the week, but farewelling a year with a bunch of strangers in one of the most beautiful, remote locations in the world has to be up there with my all-time favourite dining experiences.
Like the mountains surrounding the lodge, our plates were piled high with roast chicken and potatoes, locally sourced venison, lamb, salmon and cod, delicious vegetarian dishes, and eventually – several belt notches later – dessert. Mostly I remember Riley devouring icecream, but Pio Pio is acclaimed for its sticky date pudding too. It’s a good thing Riley got the dancing going because there were some calories that needed burning for the adults.
That said, in a six-night Southland road trip that began and ended in Invercargill, we weren’t short of calorie-burning activities. The adventures had started five nights earlier at Invercargill’s Queens Park where we got off the plane and stretched our legs at an immaculate 80-hectare slice of England. Founded in 1856, Queens Park is all tree-lined avenues, rotundas, ponds, gardens and one of the best children’s playgrounds in the South Island. It’s Invercargill in its leafiest, most enviable light.
Back in the rental car, we set the GPS northwest two hours and 155km to Te Anau, population 2760. Te Anau sits on the edge of the enormous Fiordland National Park, a 12,607sq km slab of primaeval rainforests, snow-capped peaks, island-dotted lakes, towering waterfalls, and the sounds and fiords that have drawn millions of tourists from all over the world since the late 1800s.
Given Fiordland is big enough to be a country in and of itself (as I’m fond of pointing out, it is over 17 times the size of Singapore), no matter your length of time here, it’s still likely to only be a surface-scratching. But that doesn’t mean a relatively short stay is in vain. We had three nights in Te Anau and that gave us enough time to do a full day trip to Doubtful Sound, have another day cycling e-bikes between Lake Te Anau and Lake Manapouri, and space in between to get a feel for a town with few aesthetic rivals in New Zealand.
That day at Doubtful Sound is really three activities in one, with the cruise on Lake Manapouri, the bus ride across Wilmot Pass, and the cruise tour of Doubtful Sound. The 142sq km Lake Manapouri is home to no less than 33 islands, 22 of which are covered in lush rainforest and many with white sandy shores. I kept thinking that this is where Celebrity Treasure Island should really be filmed if they ever lose interest in windswept Northland farms.
Then there’s the bus ride that takes you right through more of that near-impenetrable forest on a dramatic pass that is the only road in New Zealand disconnected from the main network. And as for Doubtful Sound, at more than three times the size of Milford Sound, it is the similarly awesome sight of mountains rising all around from the seafloor, though with a fraction of the tourists. We saw dolphins and fur seals and even when Riley decided it was all a bit much and fell into a deep sleep on my lap, it was never anything less than enthralling.
After those three nights in Te Anau it was the two-hour, 120km-drive north into Milford Sound via the magnificent Milford Rd (think jagged mountains, perfect tree tunnels, waterfalls, lakes and one photo-op after another) for two nights of hiking, cruising, dancing and feasting. There’s little that can be said about cruising Milford Sound that hasn’t been said before, but the sight of those dangling, skyscraper-high waterfalls pouring from sheer cliffs covered in physics-defying plants will always take my breath away.
Handy tip if you’re pushed for time: walk the final 5.5km of the Milford Track from Sandfly Point to Giant Gate Bridge. There and back is 11km and two-and-a-half hours that act as a kind of greatest hits package of the Milford Track. Frequently cited as the single finest walk in New Zealand and one of the best in the world, the full track takes three to four days.
We returned to Invercargill via the Southern Scenic Route. First point of order was to not rush the Milford Rd with planned stops at Lake Gunn (the moss-draped beech forest here looks straight out of a fairy tale) and of course, the famed Mirror Lakes.
After lunch in Te Anau, we took the slightly longer, more coastal, and - as the name suggests - more scenic route to Invercargill. Two-and-a-half hours if done in one go, it was much more fun allowing for time to wander around the seaside homes of Riverton, for Riley to hunt for pretty pebbles (garnet, jasper, quartz, nephrite etc.) at Gemstone Beach near Orepuki, and to get in among the festivities at the wood-chopping, highland-dancing high jinks of the annual Tuatapere Sports Day. We finally pulled into Invercargill in the evening, where the sun still shines brightly late into the night as it does in these parts in the height of summer.
There was a time, not that long ago, when the longest flight most New Zealanders could realistically take was from Auckland to Invercargill. At two hours, it’s only 45 minutes shorter than a flight to Tonga, or an hour less than getting to Fiji. And during the era of the pandemic when travel within New Zealand was open but international borders remained shut, that flight to Invercargill really felt like you were going somewhere. But here’s the thing: it still does. New Zealand is a small country, so cracking the two-hour mark feels significant, irrespective of once-in-a-century health crises.
It sure did for us when my wife and I looked at a map and realised New Zealand’s southernmost city could be the beginning and end of one of our greatest Kiwi road trips.
Getting there: Fly Auckland to Invercargill non-stop in two hours.
Getting around: We enjoyed a Toyota RAV4 hybrid rental car. This was so easy for all our gear and was also extremely cheap when it came to petrol.
Pack: You can hire car seats from your car rental but Air New Zealand is very used to having people fly with car seats. So, in short, bring your own.
We opted not to take a stroller and to take a chance on Riley being up for walking. Luckily for us, she was. Walks like the Lake Gunn Nature Trail are mostly flat and very doable for little legs, or for parents with front packs or backpacks.
Stay: Milford Sound Lodge provided a port-a-cot, and our 2 Bedroom Garden Chalet meant Riley could have her own room. The excitement for Riley to wake up and see kea on the balcony was huge.
For more things to see and do in the region visit southlandnz.com.
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