Wainui is on the sea coast within four miles of Akaroa, with which it has communication twice a week, and also with Lyttelton once a week by means of a small steamer. The district has a cheese factory, and grows grass seed extensively, and sheepfarming is also carried on by the settlers. Red clay abounds in the neighbourhood, hares are plentiful, and there is good seafishing. Mails are received and despatched twice a week, and the local post office has a postal note branch and a telephone service. There is also a public school with an average attendance of twenty-eight. Church services are held in the schoolroom on three Sundays in the month, by the Presbyterian and Church of England ministers at Akaroa. Wainui is sixty miles from Christchurch.

Mr. Harry Oriano Grandi Haylock, who was appointed manager of the Wainui Co-operative Dairy Factory in September, 1902, is a son of Mr. Harry Haylock, farmer, of the Kaike. Mr. Haylock was born in 1873, and educated at the Onuku public school, in the lower Kaike valley. He worked for a number of years at the watchmaking trade in Lyttelton, but left that business at the age of twenty-one, and commenced farming with his father. Mr. Haylock was for some years a member of the local school committee, and at the present time (1903) is a member of various social clubs.