At home along the coast

A turn-of-the-century wooden house overlooks Warrington and Blueskin Bay.

When you reach the top of the motorway heading north from Dunedin, the expanse of Blueskin Bay opens out invitingly before you, but to enjoy the coastal delights and history, you need to leave SH1 and head around the back roads.

• Slideshow: Heritage homes of the coastline

Dotted along the coast are settlements near beaches that grew up as holiday resorts from the 1890s - Doctors Point Rd and Warrington at Blueskin Bay, and Karitane at the Waikouaiti River estuary.

They were popular picnic destinations as well, serviced by passenger and excursion trains from Dunedin.

At Warrington, two early-20th-century houses, both with wooden panelling, spectacular views over the coast, and relaxing gardens, will be open for people on the Heritage Homes of the Coastline tour.

Also at Warrington is the little Anglican church of St Barnabas, tucked away behind a lych gate in a peaceful graveyard that holds the remains of whalers and local residents.

It's worth a visit to see the jewel-like stained-glass windows in the west wall.

These, the story goes, were made at studios in Munich, Germany, and shipped out to Melbourne for a Catholic church in 1918.

However, watersiders there refused to unload them because they came from Germany, which at the time was at war with Britain and its empire, so they stayed on the ship and were unloaded at Dunedin, where they remained in storage for many years.

In 1935, Bishop Samuel Neville, who is buried in the graveyard, had them installed in the little church.

Further up the coast, past the site of the baronial Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, now Sir Truby King Reserve, is Puketeraki lookout, where you can admire the view of Karitane, the jagged Huriawa Peninsula and the towering yellow Cornish Head at the north end of Waikouaiti Bay.

At Karitane, Kingscliff, built in 1901 as a holiday home by Sir Truby King, who was the innovative medical superintendent at Seacliff asylum, will be open.

King, perhaps better known as the founder of the Plunket Society, used this house as a hospital for ailing babies - the first of the Karitane hospitals.

In 1925, King sold the house to the Lawson family, who still own it.

They made changes, including building an indoor panelled staircase and opening out the rooms that were once babies' nurseries.

However, King's original wood-panelled fireside alcove sits snugly in the middle of the house. Kingscliff's spacious gardens overlook the Waikouaiti River estuary where fishing boats bob on the tide, but from the back garden, sheltered by pine trees, you can hear the roar of the breakers beating on the rocks of the Huriawa Peninsula, site of Ngai Tahu chief Te Wera's pa.

About 250 years ago, it was beseiged by Te Wera's nephew Taoka, who camped on the sandspit opposite and treacherously stole a sacred image by creeping up the blowhole on the other side of the peninsula.

The image is said to have flown miraculously back to its home when Hatu the tohunga worked a magic spell.

High on Cornish Head across the bay sits Matanaka, Johnny Jones' house built in 1843-44, which, along with the remaining farm buildings, is probably the oldest building in Otago.

Jones was one of the largest landowners and most influential men in mid-19th century Otago.