At the very bottom of New Zealand, beyond Foveaux Strait, there is one more island, and on that island, a single village. Oban has about four hundred residents, a few streets, a century-old pub and a horizon of wooded coves. Ships anchor offshore and tenders drop passengers at the Halfmoon Bay wharf, the crescent-shaped bay that serves as the town's waterfront. The rest of Stewart Island, which Māori call Rakiura, belongs almost entirely to nature: a national park covers 85% of its land.

A village at the end of the inhabited world

From the wharf, all of Oban can be explored on foot in an hour: the only grocery store, the school, the church and the South Sea Hotel, whose bar has welcomed fishermen and hikers for more than a century. The Rakiura Museum, opened in 2022 under the Māori name Te Puka o Te Waka, "the anchor stone of the canoe," traces the island's successive lives: sealers, sawmills, canneries and the families who stayed when everything else left. Blue cod and Foveaux Strait oysters still keep the boats moored in the bay in business, and local plates reflect it.

Ulva, the bird island

The most precious outing of the port call is just a few minutes by water taxi from the small Golden Bay wharf, on the other side of the hill. Ulva Island, rid of its introduced predators, serves as a refuge for the country's rarest birds. You walk on easy trails beneath a primary forest of rimu and tree ferns, while kākā tear at the bark overhead and weka rummage through the dead leaves at the edge of the path. Tūī and bellbirds provide the soundtrack. Two hours are enough for the main loop, binoculars in hand. Water taxis can be booked right at the wharf or through the agencies on the waterfront, and departures are adjusted to the tender schedules.

Trails and viewpoints

In the immediate vicinity, several short walks give a sense of the island. The climb to Observation Rock, fifteen minutes from the centre, opens a panorama over Paterson Inlet, its islets and its sheltered waters. To the north, the road ends at Lee Bay, the gateway to the national park, where a sculpture shaped like an anchor chain marks the start of the Rakiura Track, one of the country's Great Walks. Following its first kilometre between beach and forest gives a taste sufficient to dream of coming back with a backpack.

Kiwis and southern lights

Rakiura means "land of glowing skies." The island owes this name to the twilights of the deep south and to the southern lights that sometimes set its nights ablaze; it is also recognized as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary, a designation obtained in 2019, among the first in the Southern Hemisphere. Its forests also shelter more kiwis than the island has residents. The national bird, nocturnal almost everywhere else, can sometimes be spotted here in broad daylight on the beaches, where it probes the sand for sandhoppers. No promises, but keep your eyes open: local guides know its habits.

Managing your hours well

The realistic choice comes down to two options: devote the day to Ulva Island and the village, or combine Observation Rock, the museum and a boat trip on Paterson Inlet. Trying to do everything would mean rushing in a place that teaches exactly the opposite.

On the way back, from the deck, the village quickly shrinks between the dark hills. Watch it disappear while thinking about what it represents: the last point of light before the Southern Ocean, and one of the rare places where New Zealand still looks the way it did before everyone else arrived.