Friday, 17 October 2025
A repositioning day today, travelling from Te Anau to Queenstown, but first we made a quick visit to the Te Anau Bird Sanctuary. This is a bird sanctuary concentrating on care and rehabilitation for injured birds and captive breeding programs for rare and endangered species so it is definitely NOT a bird park. They only have a small number of birds on-site and these can be viewed for free (donation appreciated) during daylight hours. We mainly visited to see the Takahē as we are extremely unlikely to see these in the wild.
We were lucky to see three of these prehistoric-looking flightless birds in their enclosure. The sanctuary supports the Takahē Recovery Programme by raising chicks for release into predator controlled wild homes at around one year of age. There were no staff on-site and currently no guided tours, so we wandered around until we found an aviary with some Antipodes Island parakeets. These are not native to mainland New Zealand but are held here as part of an ‘insurance’ population which has been established in case harm comes to the isolated wild population.
Next we set the SatNav for Queenstown and headed out of town on State Highway 94, soon reaching The Key where we encountered several kilometres of roadwork. After clearing the roadworks, we stopped at our first scenic viewpoint, near the Spear Peak Red Tussock Conservation Area. We actually didn’t see the sign until after photographing the mountains to the north so, hopefully, there are some red tussocks in the foreground, ha, ha?
At Mossburn, we turned left onto State Highway 97 (the Mossburn Five Rivers Road) to continue our drive around the southern end of the Eyre Mountains Conservation Park. We were very pleased that the slow vehicle in front of us turned right towards Invercargill. Our joy was short-lived, however, with more roadworks holding us up on the Mossburn Five Rivers Road! Reaching Five Rivers it was left again onto State Highway 6 (the Athol Five Rivers Road) to head in a more northerly direction. Once again we were driving through agricultural land with LOTS of sheep and cows in the paddocks beside the road.
Arriving in Garston we could see a crop being grown on trellises. Kiwi fruit or hops we wondered. When we passed the sign saying ‘Good beer grown here’ we knew it was hops! At least it made a change from sheep and cows. Shortly after this we swept around a bend in the road and … there was a stream train. That was something different. Being suckers for a vintage train we pulled off the road for a sticky beak.
It turns our that we were at the Fairlight Railway Station and the train was a private charter of the Kingston Flyer, that occasionally travels along the old railway line from Kingston to Fairlight. The passengers had disembarked at Fairlight for morning tea, so we happily snapped photos of the locomotive as it sat at the station. Bernie asked a passenger if she knew when they would be leaving. When she said ‘soon’ we decided to wait to watch their departure. Bernie was hoping to be able to take a steamy photograph as the locomotive chugged out on its homeward leg.
With only a two hour drive today, we had time to spare, so we decided to be crazy trainspotters and drive to the station at Kingston to see the train come in. You can’t have too many photos of a good steam train and it was a change from photographing wildlife and scenery. It didn’t take us long at all to drive to Kingston, then we had to settle in to wait for the Kingston Flyer to complete its much slower journey. We managed to fill in an hour being train nerds.
After a quick bite to eat at the Kingston Corner Shop & Café, we continued along the shore of Lake Wakatipi with stops to photograph more scenery at the Lake Wakatipi Lookout, the Devil’s Staircase Lookout, the Halfway Bay Lookout and the Drift Bay Lookout. That’s a lot of photographs looking over the lake to the mountains!
Arriving in Frankton, we made our way to the Queenstown Woolworths, to stock up on a few items. Aargh, more roadworks on the road that runs between Frankton and Queenstown. I think once these would have been separate towns, but they have grown over the years to the point where Frankton is virtually a suburb of Queenstown. Even after we cleared the roadworks, it was much busier around Queenstown than we have experienced since Christchurch.
We checked in at the Garden Court Apartments, scoring an upgrade to an apartment with a separate bedroom. We were expecting more of studio apartment, so that’s very nice to have a separate kitchen/lounge/dining area, a bedroom and a bathroom. We also have a washing machine and dryer, so we’ll be able to freshen up some clothes. And, we even have a slice of view in one direction to The Remarkables (mountains) and a sliver in the other direction down to the lake.
After settling in, we drove over to the Skyline Gondola to take a ride up Ben Lomond. We purchased packaged ice-creams (Tip Top Trumpets was all that was available!) and ate them out on the balcony overlooking the lake. As we walked out onto the balcony we were accosted by a young lady, asking us if we wanted to have our photo taken for free. Oh, OK, we’d already rejected the photo op at the bottom of the gondola, but decided it would be a good opportunity to get a photo of us eating ice-cream without it being a terrible selfie, ha, ha.
We continued the walk up the hill, the chair lift is only for those holding a Skyline Luge ticket. We watched people hurtling down the hill on the luge carts and contemplated returning tomorrow or Sunday to give it a go?? There were people older than us riding so … we should be fine. With the weather holding throughout our visit, despite looking threatening, we made our way back down the mountain to drive back to our room.
It was about a ten minute walk down into the CBD for dinner. We opted for the receptionist’s recommendation, an Italian restaurant, Farelli’s by Giovi. With both of us having pasta last night we maybe should have thought that through a bit more as we ended up eating pasta again tonight. So many carbs!! LOVE pasta though. At least we had an uphill walk afterwards to burn up some kilojoules?!
Steps: 14,860 (9.61kms)
