PIONEERING THE FUTURE In 1860 William Gilbert Rees and Nicholas Von Tunzelman came to Queenstown to develop its pastoral potential. They burned much of the beech forest and shrubland to open up grazing land. However, development of Queenstown changed forever when in 1862 Jack Tewa, a Māori shearer…
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The TSS Earnslaw is one of the world’s oldest and largest remaining coal-fired steamships and has graced Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown since 1912. She is the last of a long line of coal-burning steamers used on the lake to ferry people and goods to inaccessible areas on the shores of Lake Whakatipu…
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Arrowtown is one of New Zealand's oldest towns, now famous for a discovery that saw fifteen hundred miners flock there at the end of 1862. The discovery, of course, was gold, found in the Arrow River in 1862 by Jack Tewa, a Maori shearer for one of the first European settlers in Queenstown William…
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Because of our remote and inaccessible location, Queenstowners took to the air early. The Queenstown airport was granted a license in 1935, two years before commercial flights began in Auckland, and five years before Christchurch airport was founded. For those first aviators, landing in Queenstown…
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For many hundreds of years getting to Queenstown was an arduous journey. Cut off by gorges and hemmed in by mountains, the rugged isolation of the area made it impenetrable for all but the toughest travellers. Māori people were the first adventurers to discover the area in the 13th century, settling…
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Three of the eleven Tohu Whenua in Otago are located in the Queenstown Region, acknowledging that these landmarks offer some of the best heritage experiences in the country. “[Tohu Whenua] is an exciting venture telling Aotearoa New Zealand’s defining stories and bringing our country’s history…
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Queenstown Aerial view of the Wakatipu Basin Māori Legend Carved out of the last ice age 15,000 years ago, Lake Whakatipu was formed by a huge glacier that pushed through the land from the north-west. Though the lake is a relatively thin ‘S’ shape, the jagged mountains that surround it run…
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