It’s close enough to escape to without needing a mission plan — just over two hours from Queenstown, 30 minutes from Invercargill and a shade under three hours from Dunedin. Roll into town, wind the window down, and you immediately feel the shift. The noise drops, the shoulders loosen, the pace slows and the scenery quietly flexes without needing to say a word.
Riverton is one of New Zealand’s oldest settlements, but it hasn’t turned into a museum piece. It’s alive, real, and wonderfully comfortable being itself. There’s no loud reinvention story here, no theme park energy, no look-at-me type energy you get in places like Auckland. It’s coastal without being commercial. Slow without being sleepy. Laid-back without being lazy. It feels like the sort of town New Zealand used to produce before the world decided everything needed to move faster than it actually should.
For a small town, the coffee scene is surprisingly stacked. Half a dozen cafes line the main street, each with personality and local flavour. You can sit down for a flat white and the real show isn’t the coffee itself, it’s the people around it. Riverton is peak people-watching territory.
Pull up at The Crib Cafe, park yourself in the corner, and you will learn more about how the town works in 20 minutes than you would in a year of scrolling community Facebook pages. Locals don’t rush in and out. They stop. They listen. They talk to each other like humans used to before the world got too busy for eye contact. When I was there, a dozen or so people filled the tables and at one point everyone was talking across the room, asking what each person had been up to, checking in on each other, genuinely interested, genuinely listening. Nobody cared about time, more concerned about each other. It felt like a glimpse of what social connection used to look like before we all got a bit too efficient for our own good.
Tucked a couple hundred metres back from the coast is a tidy nine-hole golf course that could double as a scenic therapy session. The green fees are a casual $20 and the membership pricing sits at $150 for your first year and $250 thereafter. The value is so good it almost makes you grin when you’re handing your money over. It’s not a club built for status or show. It’s built to be used, enjoyed and shared. No crowds, no elbows, just golf that feels like it was invented to be played the right way. Socially, casually, scenery soaked and without fuss.
Then there’s the pool — a 25m, six-lane community setup where you can grab a key for a couple hundred dollars a year and let yourself in whenever you like. Most days when we’ve been there, we’re the only ones. Empty lanes. No whistles, no crowds, no spectator sport. Just the sort of quiet availability that lets you enjoy something without fighting for space or permission.
If you like a wave, Mitchell’s Bay has one of the longest rideable waves in the country. It rolls on and on like someone forgot to tell it to stop. The kind of wave that makes you feel like you’re riding longer than you probably should, but you’re stoked you did. A proper southern break, not a one-minute wonder. The ocean here doesn’t do short stories.
For families, Taramea Bay is just as much the star. Calm, shallow, safe, kid-friendly water that doesn’t make a parent flinch. The playground sitting right there across the road is one of the best I’ve seen anywhere in the country. Clean, clever, imaginative, and built for kids to actually enjoy, not just for adults to admire.
And then, directly across from that playground, sits the holy grail — a humble fish and chip shop. Fresh hoki or blue cod, often caught that morning, cooked simply, served properly, and delivered without theatre or fuss. They also sell ice creams, which means on a hot day, you can choose your own happiness, either fish and chips by the beach or an ice cream in hand with the ocean doing the talking for you. Both options are winners, neither option needs hype, and both are simple pleasures delivered without apology.
But the best part of Riverton? It’s not the golf, the surf, or the fish and chips.
It’s the people.
It’s the kids being kids without someone hovering. It’s the locals checking in on each other without needing a reason. It’s conversations that feel real again. No agenda. No judgement. No BS. Just humans being decent to each other in a way that makes you realise maybe the South still does community better than the rest of us remember to sometimes.
Riverton doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to.
It just delivers the basics so well you don’t realise how much you needed it until you’re there.
A hidden gem.
A southern Riviera.
One of New Zealand’s best-kept secrets, hiding in plain sight.
■ Hamish Walker is a former National MP and director-salesman of Walker & Co Realty, Queenstown.
