Whakahā

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🌿 An all-inclusive, exclusive use luxury holiday home. Where families gather, rest and play.

Everything anticipated, nothing to arrange.

📍 Peel Forest, Canterbury

21/10/2026

Nobody has anywhere to be 🌿

You are up before the others. You make a coffee. You take it outside and the cold air catches you for a second.

The light is coming pink off the top of Mt Peel. The river is going about its business. And you get to take it all in. That's the morning. The whole morning. And it's the thing that people mention first when they get home.

19/10/2026

Everyone knows the Christmas Eve shop. The carpark, the queue, the list someone wrote on their phone, and the sinking realisation that you forgot the cream.

At Whakahā you can drive straight past. The pantry is stocked before you arrive, with the Christmas menu already sorted. The first night’s dinner is ready when you walk in. The tree is up and decorated, every room is made up for your mix of adults, children and babies, and one curated experience is included, such as a chef dinner.

Christmas 2026 is still open. 19 December to 4 January, six nights minimum. The whole house and twelve private hectares in Peel Forest, for your group alone. Ten across four bedrooms plus infants, an hour and forty five minutes from Christchurch.

Nobody shops. Nobody hosts. Everyone gets to be here, and be present.

From $6,240 a night for up to six guests, $350 a night for each guest from seven to ten.

Book here: https://whakaha.com/book

14/10/2026

A list of things for kids to do at Whakahā (thoroughly tested).

Fish for cockabullies in the river. Build a dam out of stones. Search for rabbits in the fields and take the bikes down the trails. Build a hut in the bush, hunt for rocks and leaves.

Lawn games and football on the grass, giant Jenga on the terrace. When it rains, board games, Lego, toys and the PS5. And books, books and more books.

The bunk room sleeps four across two sets of bunks with reading lights, where they will talk to each other far later than anyone intends. There is a cot, a change table and a baby monitor for the smallest ones.

Twelve private hectares means you can let them go without watching every step, which is most of the point.

They will sleep. And so will you.

https://whakaha.com/thestay

06/10/2026

POV: you realise all the best moments involve food.

The pantry is stocked before you arrive with good local ingredients, and each one comes with a recipe card matched to it, so the question of what to cook has already been answered. Dinner is waiting on your first night, so nobody arrives and starts unpacking groceries.

Cheese from up the road in Geraldine. A ploughman’s platter ready to go. A kitchen built for more than one cook, which is usually how it ends up anyway.

Some of it is the ingredients. Most of it is that nobody had to organise them.

For all that’s included in your stay: https://whakaha.com/thestay

30/09/2026

Fifteen minutes' walk from the front door, the light changes 🌿

Peel Forest holds some of the last lowland podocarp forest in Te Waipounamu. Kahikatea and tōtara over a thousand years old, some of them three metres across. Standing among them, the light arrives in pieces and the noise is all birdsong, korimako and riroriro and kererū moving somewhere above you.

It nearly went. Milling began here in the 1850s and the forest was being cleared for timber. In 1881 a visiting British MP, appalled at what he was seeing, bought sixteen hectares outright to stop the saw. Much of what you walk through today is standing because of that afternoon.

In local Ngāi Tahu kōrero, Tarahaoa and Huatekerekere, Mt Peel and Little Mt Peel, are the tūpuna who chose to stay, and the tōtara are their tamariki.

You can be standing in it before morning tea. whakaha.com/theplace

23/09/2026

Most designers have a signature look. You can usually tell whose work you are standing in.

Camille wanted the opposite.

Her brief for Whakahā was that the house should belong to what is around it rather than stand out. The river. The mountain. The particular pink that arrives on Mt Peel at the end of the day, about half an hour before the light goes altogether 🌄

The first idea for the primary suite was yellow. It was lovely, but not quite right for this place.

So the room was built to hold that pink instead. The same colour that turns up on the mountain outside the window. It is not something you notice on arrival. It is something you notice on the third evening, when you happen to look up and realise the walls and the mountain have gone the same shade.

The suite has a super king, an ensuite, a walk in robe, blackout drapes, and the outdoor bath just beyond the door. You can stand in the shower and look straight up the Rangitata to the Southern Alps.

whakaha.com/thestay 🌿

16/09/2026

You're spoilt for choice when it comes to walks in Peel Forest.

The Big Tree Walk is thirty minutes return, flattish and 870 metres, past tōtara and matai with the largest nearly three metres across. Suitable for almost any age, though not for strollers. The Kahikatea Walk is a flat 1.9 kilometre loop through wetland and regenerating forest, with boardwalks over the low-lying sections, about an hour. Dennistoun Bush Walk is much the same length and runs through forty hectares of pristine podocarp, one of the quietest walks in the area, though it can be muddy after rain.

For something with more in it, Acland Falls climbs steeply up a secluded gorge to a fourteen metre waterfall, about an hour return and good for older children. Emily Falls is a 1.6 kilometre climb through native tree fuchsia to a thirteen metre falls, quieter and less visited, ninety minutes return. Allans Track branches off the Acland Falls track and winds five kilometres through the podocarp forest, two to three hours.

And if someone in the group wants a proper day out, Little Mt Peel via Deer Spur is a challenging ten kilometre climb through bush onto an open ridge, with panoramic views across the Canterbury Plains to Mt Hutt and Mt Somers. Six to eight hours return. Good boots and a decent weather window are non-negotiable.

All of them well marked and managed by the Department of Conservation, and all of them a five minute drive from the house, or fifteen minutes on foot.

The full list is here: https://whakaha.com/theplace

09/09/2026

Whakahā. Twelve hectares at Peel Forest, South Canterbury, with Mt Peel in front of you and the Rangitata at the bottom of the land.

We built it for our own family first. For the holiday everyone keeps meaning to organise and never quite gets around to. Three generations under one roof. The fire lit before dinner. The children gone until dark. Nobody checking their phones.

Whakahā means to breathe out.

01/09/2026

We came to see this place on a dull grey day. The kind of day that hides everything good about a property. We put in an offer the same afternoon 🌿

Camille grew up on a dairy farm in South Canterbury with the Hinds River at the end of the paddock. Chris spent his weekends at the family bach, riding a quad bike by the water, in and out of the neighbours' place, everyone together without any particular agenda. Between us we had much the same childhood in two different postcodes, and when we had our own children we wanted to hand it on.

So we went looking. Not for a house, really. For a river, a big sky, and somewhere three generations could be under one roof without anyone tiptoeing around anyone else.

We found it at Peel Forest. We renovated it in 2024, we filled it with our own family first, and then we opened the doors, because it turned out to be too good to keep to ourselves 🙌

Whakahā means to breathe out. That is the whole idea.

Our story is here: https://whakaha.com/ourstory

24/08/2026

Did you know that Whakaha is a fully provisioned luxury holiday home? 🌿

The pantry is stocked for your whole stay. The first night's meal is ready. The fire is laid, the marshmallows are out. It's all been sorted for you, and the concierge takes care of the rest.

Everything's done. So you can simply be here, together.

https://whakaha.com/thestay

📍Peel Forest, NZ

Address

105 Dennistoun Road
Peel Forest
7992

Telephone

+64276628097

Website

https://whakaha.com/

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