Qualla: Purakaunui Falls

Purakaunui Falls: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On June 2, 1976, New Zealand Post issued a set of four stamps celebrating the country's waterfalls. The 10-cent stamp featured Purakaunui Falls, a three-tiered cascade tucked into native bush in the Catlins, far from the alpine scenery that usually represented the South Island on postage. The stamp, printed by Courvoisier in Switzerland, introduced a waterfall that most New Zealanders had never visited to a national audience. It became, almost overnight, the defining image of a region that had been largely invisible to the wider country. Nearly fifty years later, Purakaunui Falls remains the most photographed waterfall in the Catlins, and the image on that stamp, water fanning symmetrically across three rock ledges framed by dense forest, is still what most people picture when they think of this remote coast.

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Image: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Purakaunui Falls: Three Steps of Stone

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Dignan (User:Grutness), CC BY-SA 3.0. The falls cascade 20 metres in three distinct tiers, each ledge spreading the water wider before releasing it to the next. The effect is architectural, as though the rock were designed to display the water rather than merely channel it. The Purakaunui River is modest by New Zeala...

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Image: James Dignan (User:Grutness) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Purakaunui Falls: A Waterfall in the Lowlands

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Remi Jouan, CC BY-SA 4.0. What makes Purakaunui Falls unusual is its setting. The South Island's celebrated waterfalls, Milford Sound's Stirling Falls, the Sutherland Falls in Fiordland, are products of extreme alpine terrain, where rainfall and snowmelt drop from great heights through mountain valleys. P...

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Image: Remi Jouan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Purakaunui Falls: The Quiet Icon

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Willing, CC BY 3.0. Purakaunui Falls operates as a kind of ambassador for the Catlins, a region that lacks the name recognition of Fiordland or the Queenstown Lakes but contains some of the South Island's most intact native forest and wildest coastline. The falls appear in virtually every tourism br...

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Image: David Willing | CC BY 3.0