Queenstown Hill and Time Walk

This return walk, part of which is on a loop track, takes 2-3 hours and climbs 500m. Try listening to the Audioguide first.

At the top it affords a grand view of the town, mountains and lake. An option taking another 50 minutes is to proceed further to the top of the hill.

A good track that is fairly steep but within most people’s range. Information plaques of high interest offer vantage points to rest and read up on the history and development of the area through time. The Maori name for Queenstown Hill – Te Tapunui – means ‘intense sacredness’.

Start just near the corner of Edgar and Kent Streets, or you can drive your car to Belfast Crescent. The track makes its way through exotic trees such as Douglas fir, radiata pine and a scattering of macrocarpa, larch and sycamore with scrub below them. These trees lend colour and variety, especially in autumn. On the lower slopes, the canopy is thick, providing good summer shade with a myriad of pine needles under foot.

After about 10 minutes you pass through sculptured steel gates celebrating the new millennium and starting the Time Walk section. When the track divides to the left, it’s a good idea to take the route straight ahead because it is less steep and you can rest while reading the plaques. Views are tantalising at this early stage but it’s worth the wait when you come out of the trees about half way up. In the open tops, spiky matagouri, golden Festuca tussock and coprosmas dominate.

The track takes you beside low rock tors, a tarn (small mountain lake) and over an open hilltop that soon displays the full drama of the Wakatipu Basin and beyond. Across the lake are Walter and Cecil Peaks; to the left the Remarkables, the upper Kawarau River and Frankton Bay. Coronet Peak, Lake Hayes and the Crown Range can also be seen. From here the effect of glaciation – ending only ten to fifteen thousand years ago – is obvious. A glacier dug out the valley to an average depth of some 400 metres and left the steep ‘U’ shaped lower mountain slopes.

Cecil Peak reveals long scratches in its side, made by rocks being carried in the ice. It’s worth taking binoculars with you, not only for the natural landscape, but also for picking out sites in the township - the graveyard, the birdlife enclosure, the Earnslaw wharf. The Queenstown Peninsula, which now contains the very attractive town gardens, was once the site of a Maori pa of the Ngati Mamoe tribe.