ADVERTISING INFORMATION

Queenstown - History

Maori overlanders first came to this area via the valley systems of Southland and Otago, in search of food, fibre and stone resources. They hunted the large, flightless moa and they discovered sources of pounamu, greenstone, at the head of Lake Wakatipu. Expeditions into the area continued up until the middle of the 19th century, but permanent settlement was generally limited to seasonal occupation. A few groups stayed two or three years before returning to the coast.

The Gardens Peninsula was the site of a Moari Pa, occupied by the people of the Katimamoe tribe. Maori tradition tells of the first woman to swim across Lake Wakatipu -- a distance of some 3km. Hakitekura, daughter of Tuwiriroa, a Katimamoe chief, asked for a kaueti, firestick, and a dry bunch of raupo. She bound them tightly in flax to keep them dry. Early the next morning, determined to out-swim all the girls in the village, she set out across the Lake. Hakitekura navigated by keeping an eye on Cecil and Walter Peaks whose tops, touched by dawn's first light, "twinkled and winked" at her; hence their name Kakamu-a-Hakitekura, the twinkling's seen by Hakitekura. She landed on Refuge Point, Te Ahi-a-Hakitekura, and lit a fire, which is why, so the tradition goes, the rocks there are black to this day.

In 1860 William Gilbert Rees and Nicholas Von Tunzelman, came to the area to develop its pastoral potential. They burned much of the beech forest and scrubland to open up grazing land. Later, trees such as Douglas fir, larch, sycamore, willow and poplar were planted to "enhance" the "barren" landscape. Fir has been favoured by local conditions and is now rapidly invading the alpine tussock lands. Today, wilding tree control is necessary to protect the natural landscape.

Thomas Low and John MacGregor discovered gold in the Arrow, which led to other discoveries in the Shot over in 1862. The gold rush peaked in 1863 with the pastoral lease of W.G. Rees being cancelled and a goldfield declared for which he received £10,000 compensation. But by 1865, the Westland gold rush had begun and this saw an exodus of miners, which left two-thirds of the buildings in Queenstown vacant.

Advancements in mining methods led to quartz crushing and by the 1870s, gold was being mined from the quartz reefs of Macetown, Mt Aurum and the Shot over River. Up to this point, mining had been of the alluvial deposits. The 1930s saw another revival of gold mining as a result of hardships of the Depression. Modern mining has seen the use of heavy machinery.