We leave the beautiful and memorable Franz Joseph and make our way to Lake Matheson, Te ARa Kairaumati Walk. The walk through a portion of South Westland’s ancient rainforest – a glacial gem which is renowned for its mirror reflections of the towering Ka TinTin o te Moana/Southern Alps.

Kairaumati/Lake Matheson takes it’s English name from Murdoch Matheson who ran cattle on these Cook river flats in the 1870’s, and opened a store and butchers shop 15 km away at Gillespie’s Beach to service the mass of gold seekers. It is part of Westland Tai Poutini (place of the green stone) National Park.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves – truly beautiful.

On this journey we get our first views of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman and go over the Haast Pass and out of the West Coast and the difference is instantly noticeable. Our 2nd stop of the day is at Ship Creek, which is a walk near the Haast River taking us through to Thunder Creek Falls which is aptly named, the water is very fresh and would certainly be breathtaking to get into so I passed on that one.

En route to Wannaka we pass through Cardrona which hosts one of NZ’s most iconic pubs, I will get to that shortly, the town is completely original and looks like it is out of a Wild West movie set. So, the story goes that “the gorgeous Dan Carter” sustained and injury, then Colin Slade and then Aaron Cruden, the rule in NZ rugby is that to play for the All Blacks you must live/work/play in NZ and because of Dan Carter’s dominance is his position. The All Blacks were desperate. Stephen “Beaver” Donald was whitebait fishing and the coach rang The Cardrona Hotel and called him up – he hung up on the first call but took the 2nd one – he was flown up for the match against Italy the next day, In 2011, Beaver was came off the bench and kicked a crucial penalty to give the All Blacks an 8:7 win, the story was truly one of rejection to redemption as in 2008 he had debuted, however in 2010 a poor performance made him the target of intense public and media criticism, causing him to doubt his future in the sport, following this Beaver continued his career playing for the Chiefs in Bath, England.

One other unusual sight in Cardrona is the Bra fence! Apparently four women were celebrating the 2000 New Year at the Cardrona Hotel. After leaving the put late at night they each hung their bra on the nearby fence as a celebration of the millennium and it literally took off from there!

As we travel over the Crown range, the view over Queenstown is quite something, we are so high we are above the aeroplanes in the valley beneath. On we go through Arrowtown again with all the original buildings, again this was an old gold mining village, This is a huge area for Skiing in the winter and Coronet Peak is one of the big 5 in this area. We drive up Lady’s Mile which was the first road that women could drive a horse and cart up themselves!

Queenstown was named officially in 1863 like to honour Queen Victoria with the popular belief suggesting miners named it after Queenstown in Ireland (now Cobh), another popular legend suggests miners, finding the location beautiful, proclaimed it a “town first for a Queen”.