Southland, New Zealand — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Southland known for?

Farming, forestry, and horticulture carry Southland, and the land shows it: grassland plains spread below the high country in the region's interior. Invercargill is the only city. Roughly half the region's people live there, which leaves the rest of Southland, the mountains, the glaciers, the long coast, and Stewart Island across the water, very thinly settled indeed.

Otago Region borders it to the north and east.

Where is Southland?

Southland covers the southwestern part of the South Island, and it ends where New Zealand does. The range of ground inside one region is what stands out: high mountains and glaciers at the head of it, then a drop through hill country onto broad grassland plains that carry the farming. Coast runs for a long way along the edge.

Stewart Island lies offshore, counted within the region although separated from the rest of it by water, and it pushes Southland's reach further toward the pole than any other part of the country reaches. Two regions meet Southland on land. Otago Region runs along the northern and eastern border, close enough culturally that the line between them reads as administrative rather than physical, while the West Coast Region touches only the far northwestern corner.

The rest is sea. Exposed to open ocean on its southern and western sides, Southland takes weather straight off the water, and the coast it owns runs for thousands of kilometres. Land use sorts itself by height.

Farming, forestry, and horticulture hold the lower ground and the plains, which is where the region's working landscape sits; the mountains and glaciers above are left to themselves. Invercargill occupies the flat country. It is the only city Southland has, and its position on the plains rather than in the hills says most of what needs saying about where people in the region have chosen to live.

What is Southland like?

Southland's working life is agricultural before it is anything else. Farming, forestry, and horticulture are named as the linchpins of the regional economy, and that ordering shows in the settlement pattern, the road network, and the seasons that structure the year across the plains. Invercargill absorbs the rest.

Roughly half the region's people live in the one city, which gives it a concentration of civic life unusual for somewhere so lightly peopled. Otago Region next door is described as culturally similar, and the resemblance is real enough that the two are often read together rather than apart. The border does not divide much.

What separates Southland instead is water: Stewart Island belongs to the region but sits across open water, keeping a small community with its own rhythm somewhat apart from the mainland pattern. Sparse settlement leaves its own mark. With the second-lowest density of people of any region in the country, Southland runs on long distances, and a trip between two ordinary points in the region can cross a great deal of empty grassland before it reaches anything.

The region as an administrative unit dates only from 1989. The country beneath the boundary is older by every measure, and the farms, forests, and orchards that define the place were working long before a line on a map gave them a name.

What is the history of Southland?

Southland as a region dates from 1989. Before that the same ground existed under other arrangements, and the line drawn then gathered the southwestern corner of the South Island together with Stewart Island under a single regional authority. Invercargill was already the largest place.

Farming, forestry, and horticulture had long since set the pattern of work that the new boundary simply enclosed, and the borders with Otago Region and the West Coast Region fixed how far that pattern was held to extend.

What is the climate of Southland?

Open water sets the terms here. Exposure on the southern and western sides means weather arrives off the ocean with nothing in the way, and Southland gets a cooler, wetter run of it than regions further up the South Island. Glaciers survive in the high country.

Down on the plains the grassland stays green enough for farming, forestry, and horticulture to work the year through, and Invercargill sits in that milder belt rather than the cold one.

How do you get to Southland?

Almost every land approach comes through Otago Region, since the border it shares with Southland runs the whole northern and eastern side. Invercargill is where roads gather. The one city serves as the region's hub for onward travel across the plains and into the high country, while Stewart Island stands apart, reached only by crossing open water.

The West Coast Region touches only a corner. Few arrive that way.