Waikaia River

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Waikaia River

The Waikaia River is in the Southland region of New Zealand and feeds the Mataura River.

Where it starts and flows
- Source: swamps and tussock land in the Umbrella Mountains, east of the Pomahaka headwaters, at about 1,749 metres above sea level.
- Course: flows south for about 95 kilometres (the length includes the Waikaia East River branch).
- Mouth: joins the Mataura River at Riversdale, around 120 metres above sea level.

Size and flow
- Drainage basin: about 1,830 square kilometres.
- Average discharge: about 24.4 cubic metres per second.

What the river looks like
- Upper valley: mostly beech forest.
- Below Piano Flat: the river wanders over a floodplain that includes dairy farms.

Tributaries and fishing
- Main tributaries: Gow Burn, Steeple Burn, Dome Burn, Winding Creek, and Argyle Burn.
- Brown trout: Dome Burn and Steeple Burn are important brown-trout spawning streams in the Mataura system.
- Water quality: lower reaches have seen declines in water quality in the early 2000s due to more intensive dairy farming nearby.

Nokomai mire
- A large, relatively undisturbed wetland in the upper catchment, possibly the largest of its kind in Australasia.
- It drains south via Dome Burn to the Waikaia and north via Roaring Lion Creek to the Nevis River. A small part is in the Nokomai catchment.
- The mire is rich in grasses, sedges and mosses, with shallow pools and small islands.

Gold mining history
- Gold was dredged along the river at Freshford (south of Waikaia) until 2019.
- In 2021, an application was made to mine at Winding Creek, east of Waikaia.
- Other mines east of Waikaia produced gold from rocks formed in the Otago Schist.
- The gold came from ancient rocks eroded from the Old Man Range / Kopuwai and deposited on alluvial plains.
- By 1909, about 16 dredges were operating in the area.