About Queenstown
How Queenstown came to be here — Kāi Tahu routes, Rees's farm, the Shotover gold rush, and what the town turned into afterwards.
Queenstown sits on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, in the middle of the South Island, with The Remarkables across the water and the Southern Alps behind it.
It is a small town that handles a large number of visitors. The resident population is well short of what the place looks like it holds in July or January.
How it got here
Kāi Tahu travelled through the Wakatipu long before European settlement, following seasonal food-gathering routes and reaching the pounamu sources beyond the head of the lake.
William Gilbert Rees established the first European farm here in 1860. Two years later Thomas Arthur and Harry Redfern found gold in the Shotover River, and the farm became a goldfield almost overnight — Rees was paid out and left his homestead in Queenstown Bay. The rush filled the town, and when the gold ran down at the end of the century most of the people left with it.
Tourism came later, and the ski fields later again. The name is said to come from a settler's remark that the place was fit for Queen Victoria — a story repeated often enough that its origin no longer matters much.
Where to go next
The Lake Wakatipu guide covers the walks and viewpoints. Arrowtown and Glenorchy are the two trips worth making out of town. What's on has the calendar, and free things to do is the list for a day that does not need booking.
