Places

Queenstown is small and everything around it is close. Nothing on this page is more than about an hour from the town centre, and most of it is inside twenty minutes. The geography is simple once you see it: a long lake with a town on one bay, two rivers coming into it, mountains on every side, and a scatter of settlements along the roads between.

Start here

• Lakes — Lake Wakatipu is the big one, and then there are the smaller ones people actually swim in and camp beside: Moke, Hayes, Dispute.
• Rivers — the Kawarau and the Shotover between them account for the gold rush and most of the adventure industry. The Dart and Rees are the wild ones above Glenorchy.
• Mountains — two ski fields you drive up, and two walks you can start from town.
• Towns — Arrowtown for the gold-mining street and the autumn colour, Glenorchy for the head of the lake, Gibbston for the wine, plus the ones you drive through.
• Parks — the gardens and reserves in and around town.
• Skippers Canyon — the gorge and the road into it, which is a category of its own.

How to think about distances

Arrowtown, Lake Hayes, Gibbston and Coronet Peak are all fifteen to twenty-five minutes. The Remarkables and Moke Lake are about the same, on rougher roads. Glenorchy is forty-five minutes up the western side of the lake, and Wanaka is an hour over the Crown Range. Add time in winter, and add more at the Frankton roundabouts in the middle of the day.

Some of the best of it is on unsealed road — Moke Lake, Skippers, the top of Paradise Road. Check what your rental agreement allows before you assume you can drive it.

Seasons

This is the southern hemisphere: winter runs June to September and is peak ski season, and Christmas and January are high summer. Autumn, through April and into May, is when the willows and poplars turn and the district looks its best. See Queenstown weather.