Waikouaiti to Middlemarch
As I write, Waikouaiti and Karitane are in the news for all the wrong reasons with the tap water having been found to contain much more than the acceptable levels of lead. An angry and apprehensive community is demanding answers from authorities who are scrambling to find a solution while the government is keeping a watchful eye on how things unfold.
However, there was no suggestion of any problem at the time of our visit. Travelling from Dunedin and intending to look around Middlemarch and other Otago locations, we’d detoured off the main road and were impressed by the beauty of the bay from a nearby lookout point. Although the small Otago town of Waikouaiti seemed somewhat unprepossessing as we drove along the state highway, we found some adequate accommodation, intending to look at the seaside in the morning before travelling inland from Palmerston, a further 10km up the road.
Waikouaiti and Karitane are within 5km of each other, and the name Karitane was familiar because, of course, it’s the place where in 1907 Sir Frederic Truby King, with
