Wharanui is a small village located in Marlborough on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island between Ward and Kaikoura. State Highway 1 and the Main North Line railway both pass through the village. For over a decade, Wharanui was the southern terminus of a railway that ran from Picton south through Blenheim. The railway reached Wharanui by 1915 and it was intended to continue the line southwards via Kaikoura to a line being built north from Christchurch that had its current terminus in Parnassus, but World War I stopped construction and Wharanui remained the southern terminus of the isolated Blenheim section.