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Published: December 26th 2010
We left Te Anau and headed north towards Queenstown arriving quite early as it was not too far and the roads were fairly quiet. As we approached the town, stunning Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountains came into view as we skirted the edge of the huge lake. The aptly named Remarkables and the Eyre Mountains form a breathtaking backdrop to this town which has become a popular tourist destination particularly for those seeking ‘adventures’ which has seen the town grow quite rapidly compared to other towns. We planned to stay in much smaller Arrowtown nearby as we had been recommended a campsite on the edge of the town by someone we had met in Oamaru. Arrowtown is just like being in a living museum, the feeling of being transported back to another time is instant the moment you arrive. It is the most picturesque and best preserved gold-mining settlement in Central Otago and some say the prettiest small town in NZ. It certainly retains much of its original character with many of the old shops and cottages still existing today, a good example of a well preserved historic town not trying to be what it is not. The settlement of
Arrowtown literally sprung up overnight with the discovery of gold in the Arrow River in 1862. Thousand of miners from around the globe flocked to the area and the river became famed as one of the world’s richest sources of alluvial gold in the world. At the height of the ‘rush’, the population of the town rose to over 7000 people. These pioneers constructed small cottages of stone and timber, established churches and planted avenues of trees, still very much in evidence today. Their legacy is a picturesque town that retains its old world charm through careful preservation of it’s colourful past. It is now though very much a tourist town with six of the finest southern ski areas on its doorstep, although we were not here to ski, particularly as we had arrived on 1 December the first official day of the NZ Summer. Our plan was to do some walking as the area has many delightful walking tracks. We visited the local I-Site which was also the museum and picked up some walking maps before having toasted sandwiches and ginger beer in the garden of the old Postmaster’s House one of the historic houses. It was such a
lovely day that we ate in the garden which reminded us of an English garden in June with roses in full bloom which you could smell all around you. The first walk we did was the Arrowtown Anniversary Walk, a 4.2km walk along the banks of the Arrow River. This trail was built by the Otago Regional Council in 1998 to commemorate 150 years of European Settlement in Otago. It travels downstream passing the site of the Criterion Quartz Mining Company, one of the first quartz mines in NZ which began extracting gold from there in 1860s. It was a wide easy track with Willow, Sycamore and Larch trees lining the river alongside a multitude of Lupins in full colour. Part of this trail was the location for ‘The Gladden Fields’ of Lord of the Rings. The next walk we undertook was the Sawpit Gully Trail a 2-3 hour loop with a grade medium to high fitness level which we thought would be quite interesting as it had a variety of scenery. We set off on the trail which took us high above the river meandering below us. After a while the trail became quite narrow and had dropped away
in several places to the river below so we decided to return the way we had come and cross over on to another track by the Arrow River below. As we walked along by the river we noticed several people panning for gold on the river edge. We spoke to a elderly local chap who said that he had not found anything today but someone found some flecks of gold the day before. He said you could never make your fortune - his neighbour had panned on the river all his life and found nothing yet someone else he knew rarely panned but when he did he found a nugget worth about £2,000 so it is still there to be found – perhaps we will give it a go! So we wandered along the river but had no success maybe next time! Our final walk in the area included a visit to the ruins of a Chinese Settlement. At the peak of the gold rush in the 1880s this sad collection of extremely tiny stone buildings was home to some 60 Chinese miners and as you wandered around the remains of their houses you saw what a difficult life they
had. We continued to the museum in the town where their story is told together with gold and mineral specimens, miner’s tools and relics of the Chinese miners themselves. Many of them were never able to return home to their families and it was quite sad reading their stories. The last Chinese miner died in Arrowtown in the early 1900s and all the locals attended his funeral and the settlement finally became deserted. Other ghost towns are scattered throughout this region including Macetown where there was another walk which we were going to do but after talking to an English chap in our campsite we decided not to. He said that he had done it the day before and it took him 9 hours instead of the stated 6 and he also got himself very lost! The last mine closed in Macetown in 1914, and after WWII its sole inhabitants were two old men and when they died that too became another ghost town. Later we undertook the Arrowtown Heritage Rose Trail which was formed by rose enthusiasts to promote the preservation and planting of old roses so that their beauty could be enjoyed by future generations. The local Heritage
group in Arrowtown armed with picks and shovels like the early miners set about planting the trail in the old town in early 1980 which they thought would be a perfect setting for rose species dating prior to 1920. The relevance of the surroundings had influenced the choice of roses at each site. For example, the Catholic Church’s planting included the roses, Cardinal Richelieu, The Bride and The Bishop; the Anglican Church has Wedding Day and Rambling Rector. The wall beside the path down to the Chinese Village has been planted with China roses including very old Mutablis and the walkway to the Old Gaol has a tapestry hedge of moss roses. It was a lovely walk which at the same time also enabled us to see some more of the historical buildings around the town. The next day we travelled into Queenstown to spend the morning around the town before our afternoon tour to Glenorchy. We wandered around the harbour area and saw the TSS Earnslaw, known as ‘The Lady of the Lake’, which is the last remaining coal-fired passenger vessel operating in the southern hemisphere. The elegant vessel cruises across Lake Wakatipu and we watched as she moored
and was re-loaded with coal on the side. We spent a while wandering around the Queenstown Botanical Gardens directly across the lake from the steamer wharf, which was a tranquil, fir tree surrounded expanse of broad lawns and rose gardens that also had excellent views of Walter Peak, Ben Lomond and The Remarkables. In the gardens they also had an area where you could play Frisbee Golf. Frisbee golfing (or, disc golfing) is a game similar to proper golf which takes place on a purpose designed course. Instead of using a golf ball, you use (you’ve guessed it) a frisbee. Add to that a tee box, 18 holes, set pars on each hole, and metal baskets for a target and you’ve got frisbee golf (I expect JT has played it). Apparently the Frisbee is significantly harder and somewhat smaller than the typical frisbee you’d throw at the beach – this allows you to theoretically throw it further. It was a shame but we did not see anyone playing this whilst we were there so did not join in but instead wandered around the delightful gardens instead! We stopped by a memorial to Scott and chatted to a couple from the
North Island that were visiting the South Island and they gave us some useful tips for our onward journey. We finally made our way back to town to join our tour to Glenorchy. Set amongst towering mountains, beech forest and flowing river the tour was a Heritage Culture Scenic Tour to an area with outstanding beauty including the Dart River Valley. As we boarded the 4WD we realised that we were the only ‘older couple’, apart from us there were two single German girls and one Australian man who was on his ‘first’ wedding anniversary but his wife was doing a different tour! Chris our driver and guide asked what we wanted to get out of our trip and the two girls and chap said that they hoped to visit ‘Middle Earth’ – they all were keen ‘Lord of the Rings’ fans. The tour group usually run two tours but had joined us with this one due to low numbers. Both tours cover the same scenic area but the other tour had more of an emphasis on LOTR which was filmed in the area – it was going to be a fun day! As it turned out it was, we
saw beautiful scenery and could switch off from the LOTR talk when we wanted to, although I must admit we did listen and ‘pose’ in the various film locations. Chris had a wealth of knowledge on both the area and the films as he was an ‘extra’ at the time. We encountered Isengard, Wizards Vale, Lothlorien Forest, The Dead Marshes, Misty Mountains, Ithilien and many more. These names will only have meaning for those LOTR fans amongst our ‘blog readers’ though daughter Sharon will definitely know all of them and I expect Maisie will before too long! Chris told us many stories about the filming and said that one day the director was unhappy because the leaves of the beech trees were too small, so he ordered in a couple of lorry loads of larger leaves but when they arrived he said they were green and he wanted autumn colours so the leaves were sent around all the local schools and the schoolchildren painted them in a variety of colours. They were then returned to the woods in huge bags and wired on to the lower branches of the trees, it took about 6 months to achieve about 6 minutes
of footage, they even had some larger trees made and placed these in a ‘real’ forest of hundreds!!!! We stopped by the lake in Glenorchy whilst our guide went to collect our lunch from a local supplier in the small hamlet and then we continued to Paradise located at the head of Diamond Lake where some more scenes from the film were shot. The road was only suitable for 4WD vehicles as it was extremely uneven and we travelled through many small rivers, streams and brooks until the road finally ended completely and you could go no further. We sat and had a delightful lunch of pumpkin bread sandwiches in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the most beautiful scenery before our return back to Queenstown knowing a lot more about LOTR than when we set out. We chatted to our guide, Chris at the end and he said that his mother was English and that he got in with the wrong crowd when he was younger so his mother made him join the Paras, he was based in Aldershot but visited John Moore Barracks in Winchester so knew the area well. He was a nice chap so the spell
in the forces must have worked – I expect his mother was pleased…. He has invited us to join him in Christchurch for a Christmas Eve dinner if we are free which we will try and do. Back at the campsite we met our neighbours Terry and Sally from the south east, Terry was a Portsmouth supporter and we shared a few drinks and laughs with them in the evening as the sun went down. We also has another chat with a fellow traveller from Wincanton in Somerset who was travelling around the world on his own but hoped to meet up with his son in Australia later in the year (he was the one that got lost on the Macetown walk). The next morning we set off for Wanaka our next stop, we had met an elderly chap on a walk previously who was local and he gave us a few places to visit on our way which included his home town of Cromwell. Firstly we stopped at the historic Kiawarau Bridge on SH6 which became the world’s first bungy site in 1988 and offers a 43m high leap into a roaring river below. The NZ$8 million Kawarau Bungy
Centre opened here at the beginning of 2004 and includes the multimedia Bungy Dome theatre, a bungy museum café and bar. You can get free access to viewing decks overlooking the river by the bridge and we saw many people being strapped in and jumping but were still not tempted to do so, one girl took quite a while to be persuaded and in the end did jump but looked horror struck. The girl in the booth tried to persuade us, she said that she had done lots of jumps all over the world and it was good fun - we think not and at a cost of £100 for the privilege, definitely not. We continued our journey and stopped at a winery, we were in need of a stiff drink after watching the jumpers. It was a picturesque vineyard with vines growing up through the fields and over the top of the distant hills and disappearing as the edge of the mountain range started. The wines in this region are the furthest place that vines grown from the equator. We continued through the magnificent Kawarau Gorge stopping at the Roaring Meg hydro dam and watched the river from a
view point high above. We were about to leave when we noticed some people below in the water speeding past in the fast flowing river, they were white water sledging which looked pretty cool so we might try that sometime. We continued to Old Cromwell Town which was an historic precinct. In 1990 Lake Dunstan was formed to store water for the area and the lake flooded the main street of the original township of Cromwell which dated back to the gold rush of 1860’s. Some of the historic buildings from the precinct were saved, dismantled and rebuilt on the new site of Old Cromwell town and we spent a while wandering around the building in a beautiful lakeside setting. We finally arrived at our campsite early afternoon and wandered down to Lake Wanaka which was a lovely crystal clear lake with snow capped mountains towering all around. NZ’s fourth largest lake it sparkles at the edge of the town during the summer and in winter turns into a backdrop for a busy ski resort. We walked along to the local I-Site to see what walks there were in the area and it was brimming with outstanding all-season scenic tracks
with spectacular vistas. We decided to undertake the Mount Iron walk which was classed as moderate 1-2 hours and the Rob Roy Glacier Track classed as moderate to steep 3-4 hours. We set off the next day for the Mount Iron walk and straight away it started to climb and continued that way to the top with no flattening off, so heavy breathing ensued from both of us as we finally got to the top. But it was worth it as there were magnificent views all around and you could see Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea as well as the mountains and plains spread out below us. As we descended around the other side of the mountain we came out by the road and we noticed we were next to Puzzle World, a popular stop and which had a giant maze, illusion rooms and a puzzle café. We stopped to use their loo and got quite a shock as they are entertaining and worth a photograph! Apart from the usual ladies and gents, there is a third room, a Roman-style toilet designed to replicate roman-style ablutions with a magnificent Diorama (mural). We stopped and took a photograph for another couple
and then they took one of us. We were just about to leave when I noticed I did not have my rucksack which had our passports so we became quite concerned, in fact very concerned. Paul went to the shop to see if anyone had handed it in but no luck so we started searching everywhere we had been and other joined in to help us. Just when we had started to really panic Paul went back to the roman toilets to look down the loos and would you believe it there it was, it had literally fallen down the loo (see photo it was in the first one on the left hand side). Panic over we finished our walk and returned to our campsite. The next day we planned to do the Rob Roy Glacier Guided Trek , as part of Mount Aspiring National Park, a world heritage area this is one of the most varied and spectacular walks in NZ. We booked the tour with Lake Wanaka Eco and met Graham our guide who picked us up at our campsite and took us to Raspberry Creek Carpark (lovely name) through stunning scenery of green valleys and hills but via a 22km unsealed road which was pretty bumpy. To get to the start of he walk which was literally the end of the road, we passed just three stations (farms) which had between them the whole of this area with sheep, cattle and deer everywhere. Graham had to slow down many times while the animals moved off the track, the sheep were quite good at moving but the cattle just stopped and looked at you and took ages to move to the side. We started our walk through a field of sheep and then crossed a swing bridge over the Matukituki River which then went directly into a beech forest and continued into an alpine herb field. We saw many cascading waterfalls tumbling down into narrow river chasms directly below us. We continued on climbing steadily until just when I thought I could not go on any further the climb started to even out and we stopped for a drink and our first view of the glacier way above us. Graham was a very knowledgeable guide, he had lived in the area for just over 10 years, originally from Melbourne he used to come here for holidays but loved it so much he moved here with his wife and never wished to return home. There was quite a diversity of bird life as we walked through the forest including the smallest bird the Rifleman, the songster of the forest, the Bellbird and the world’s only alpine parrot, the inquisitive Kea. On the way up as we became hot and ran out of water we just replenished our water bottles from the many streams that flowed, the water is 98% pure and we have never tasted anything so good. We finally arrived at the top and Graham took us off the main trek to a lovely area overlooking the Rob Roy peak and right above us at over 2600 metre the spectacular hanging glacier. We sat on a rock overlooking the Glacier and had a hearty gourmet lunch complete with cold and hot drinks which Graham provided and had carried up in his own rucksack. During lunch we were joined by a couple of Kea parrots who tried to pinch anything they could get their beaks into, including trying to empty the contents of Paul’s and Graham’s pockets. Graham said they had been known to fly off with cameras and well as clothes so we had to hold on tight to all our things. After lunch we started our descent down and followed the side of the river travelling down the through the boulders and across grass boggy verges until we reached the forest edge again. This was one of the best walks we had done in NZ and although tired as we arrived back at the car we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Graham drove us back to the campsite where we said our goodbyes. Later that evening we saw the arrival of a large group of travellers at the campsite, it was Rotel Tours, a rolling hotel in an eccentric Mercedes Benz bus. This bus owned by a German tour company features a six-foot-long bed for each of its passengers. The company claims to operate some 3400 “Betten auf Rädern,” or “beds on wheels.” Answers to the obvious questions - yes, there is a bathroom, but no, there are no showers. Each bunk is about three feet wide and three feet high and you enter it through a zippered curtain. Apparently the cabin is patented, so no, you can’t steal the idea. (not that you would want to). We decided probably not for us and retired to bed in our little cosy motorhome. Tomorrow we move on to travel through the Haast Pass to new territory, the West Coast.
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Graeme Oxley
non-member comment
Hi from Wanaka
Enjoying your blog, glad you have had such a great time in the South Island. We have certainly had a mixed bag of weather since you left NZ (we had such a great day up at Rob Roy Glacier) but it sounds like the weather is a little too exciting in Australia at the moment!!!!!! - Graeme (Eco Wanaka Adventures)