Moeraki

Moeraki is a small fishing village and was once the location of a whaling station, as well as a Maori settlement in pre-European days. It is charming, with houses nestled into the hillside and surrounding the bay where fishing boats and other craft gently ride on the swell.

Like Hampden, the residents of Moeraki are keen to maintain their lifestyles in this special place and have undertaken a major engineering project on one of the access roads when the authorities were reluctant to do so.
Fleur Sullivan, the founder of the well-known Oliver’s restaurant in Clyde, Central Otago, moved to Moeraki in the late 1990s and set up her distinctive waterside restaurant ‘Fleurs Place’. The international chef, Rick Stein, has enjoyed several meals there and reservations are essential. There is also the Moeraki Tavern so all tastes and budgets are catered for.

Moeraki has a lovely camping ground with cabins, and there is a motel complex. A short drive on Lighthouse Rd and a walk will find you at the historic Katiki Point Lighthouse.

The village is best known for the nearby Moeraki Boulders which can be reached from the township via the Millenium Walkway. There is road access about 2 kms north off SH 1. It is all well signposted.

In the late 1890s Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947) who became New Zealand’s best regarded expatriate artist, regularly visited Moeraki to paint local Maori. A number of those works are now in the collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin. Keri Hulme lived in Moeraki in the 1980s while she wrote her Booker Prize–winning novel ‘The Bone People’. When you visit Moeraki you too will feel the creative atmosphere of this place and be able to visit artists’ galleries.