Exploring my ancestry in Colac Bay, the most beautiful part of New Zealand

Sometimes when you’re travelling you can arrive at a place and it feels like home from the moment your feet touch the ground. It felt like this for me when I arrived in London at 19, having spent most of my teenage years longing to be on the other side of the world.

But I never felt that again until recently. Age 26, on a road trip with my mum, and stepping out of a rental car's doors at London’s antipodes in every sense of the word; on the shores of Southland’s Colac Bay/Ōraka.

Many people often think they know the southern corner of New Zealand, but it's a place that truly has to be experienced so you can form your own judgement on its unique beauty.

My days here were spent in the freezing water; on the boat, gazing off to Stewart Island in the distance. It’s the perfect place to go and work on the creative project you’ve been putting off, or somewhere to go to reflect.

In the wake of 2020, I spent some time peeling back the layers of my own complicated relationship with race. On my father’s side, I am Ngāi Tahu. Also thanks to my father, I had no education on this side of my life until recently.

But stuck in Australia with border closures and longing to be home in every sense of the word, I went on a journey to discover where home really was for me.

I began by tracing it back. Six generations, all the way to the shores of Whenua Hou, where my great-great-great-great-grandmother Harriet Kuihi Watson met Nathaniel Bates, a sealer, and they began their life together. They had many children, and Bates became a household name across the small southern town of Riverton.

It’s a familiar story for life around these parts. The family expanded and many years later that ended in another life. I found myself constantly hungry to know more about this part of my family, about this area that suddenly seemed to feel like home, about what life was like for my whakapapa. When the trans-Tasman bubble opened, I got in a car as soon as I could and made my way south, my mother in tow.

People in Southland are made differently. Laugh all you want about and the accents, but never in my life have I seen someone so bold as to wear stubbies to the supermarket in -2 degrees. Down south, that was the norm.

Kindness was also the norm too. I went to a store in Riverton, and then the local museum, telling people who I was and what I was looking for along the way. It only dawned on me when I arrived in the town that I had done very little in the way of letting anyone know we were coming - and I wasn’t too sure what I expected from them either. But kindness was abundant, and I was guided on my way.

If you’re ever passing through Riverton, or seeking out a new destination in Aotearoa, it’s the perfect place to rest a while. At Jacob’s River Bakehouse, you’ll discover some of the best dining in town, serving up a taste of how locals eat. And two doors down the road, you’ll find the museum that punches well above its weight and offers a rich taste of the region’s history for a town so small.

Perhaps it was just my own fascination and curiosity, but the tales of how the area came to be were captivating, and deserve to be more widely known. Whenua Hou, now known as Codfish Island and one of two homes to the endangered kākāpō, earned its name because of my ancestors.

Whenua Hou loosely translates to ‘the new land’, and it’s where Māori and European settlers lived in harmony - or comparatively to the rest of the country. In this corner of the country, we knew some kind of peace.

Outside of town, you’ll find , almost always uninhabited due to the sheer temperature of the water alone. But if you’re willing to brave it with the help of a 5mm wetsuit, you’ll be treated to some of the waves of your life.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason Riverton as a town has a relaxed, Byron-esque feel to it; with the environment centre acting as a hub for the community, and beautiful organic foods abundant.

Just out of Riverton, another 15 minutes winding along the southern coast of the country, is Colac Bay. This is where my marae is; these are the shores my ancestors have walked on. There lies long expansive beaches and pristine surf conditions, just like my home in Australia (albeit somewhat colder), and when I get out of the car, the small town feels like home.

Colac Bay sits as a gateway to the southern seas. In a life where holidays are normally packed with activities and adventure, there’s not much to do other than sit back and bask in the natural beauty of the surroundings. Beaches that lay empty, bar children swimming in the ocean in the middle of winter in their stubbies and socks.

The community has a campground and tavern, all rolled into one, and on the shores of Colac Bay is my marae. It’s the perfect place to stay a while; to read a book, to knit a sweater, to enjoy the kaimoana that comes in plenty.

The bay reminds me of a saying I found at the Riverton Museum.

And on the shores of Colac Bay, I found exactly that.