What’s the ultimate RV road trip destination? A historic town. A unique museum. A creek, brimful with stories. A beach and a quiet country campsite. A sky full of stars?
Okains Bay – and especially the extraordinary museum there – ticks all the boxes. First, let’s check the map for where this little-known, under-appreciated, out-of-the-way place is. Okains Bay is on Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū / Banks Peninsula. Unlike all the other Banks Peninsula bays, which are deeply indented and narrow, Okains Bay is wide and open to the NE, where the big Pacific swells come from. It can be a challenging anchorage.
So, the best approach to Okains Bay is overland: either by the slow and very scenic road from Christchurch or Lyttleton, via State Highway 75 and Summit road – about 95km or an hour and 35 minutes; or by the even slower and even more scenic road via Governor’s Bay, Teddington, Diamond Harbour, Pūrau, Port Levy, Pigeon Bay and Little Akaloa. For this route, given the frequent stops you’ll need for photoshoots, think in terms of a whole day’s journey.
Either way, you’ll be richly rewarded. For at Okains Bay is New Zealand’s most remarkable country museum. It’s unique also for its wide collection of watercraft. A fleet of waka to rival that of Te Papa’s, including an original, restored waka tētē a full-size replica waka tāngata (a people-mover) built in the 1990s, both in a boatshed on the estuary’s edge.
