Four drift bottles, cast adrift south of the Subtropical Convergence at 48°S, 156°E in November 1980, landed within 123 days of release at a short stretch of coast north of Banks Peninsula. A high degree of coherence in the responsible drift pattern is indicated. The contemporary surface circulation inferred from satellite‐derived sea‐surface temperature distributions indicates that the bottles were entrained in a meridionally‐converging flow after drifting across the southern Tasman Sea without crossing the Convergence. They were prevented from further eastward drifting because of a marked southward flexing of the Convergence east of the Southland Current during February 1981. Because of local weather and tide effects, the bottles finally beached in Pegasus Bay.