The Society's stories

Stories

Every story on the site, era by era. Each era's heading opens the era's own page.

Māori History & First Colonists, Early Times

The iwi of Whakatipu
Three iwi over many centuries, the pounamu that brought them to the head of the lake, and the trails, kāinga and names they left across the whole basin.
Hakitekura
A young Kāti Māmoe woman swam Whakatipu Waimāori in the dark, carrying a firestick, and places around the lake are named for her.
Rees, von Tunzelmann and the first runs
Licences applied for sight unseen, a summer crossing of the Crown Range, two runs on either side of the lake, and a set of names Queenstown still uses every day.

Electricity at Bullendale
Two three-ton dynamos went up the Skippers pack track behind bullocks, and from March 1886 a quartz battery six miles beyond the road ran on hydro-electricity.
The Chinese settlement at Arrowtown
About ten huts, a long house and two stores stood along Bush Creek, worked by men who took on the ground the first rush had abandoned.

The Whakatipu steamers
The Antrim was built at a sawmill near Kinloch, the Ben Lomond was carted up from Dunedin in pieces, and the Mountaineer came to Kingston by rail in sections.
The first tourists
Anthony Trollope crossed the lake in 1872 and told his readers the district would be known for its scenery, and by 1883 every visitor was expected to climb Ben Lomond.

Arrowtown at war, 1914 to 1918
Arrowtown borough had 308 people at the 1916 census, and eighteen names went onto its war memorial.
The Kawarau Falls dam
A gold company dammed the outlet of the lake in 1926, found almost no gold, and left the district a bridge.

The Kingston road
Approved in 1927, halted in 1929, opened in 1936, and made with picks and wheelbarrows because employment was the point.
The district at war, 1939 to 1945
A town of eight hundred, one petrol coupon a month, and a peace that turned it into a resort.

Saving the old stone library
A mayor's casting vote for demolition in November 1966, and a ratepayers' referendum three months later that went the other way, 343 to 175.
The Post Office appeal
Five days of hearing, a counsel who left the country midway, and an auditor's note that one costs award would have left the Society technically insolvent.