Giveaways
ALMOST a year ago, on 19 January 2024, I put up a post about a New Year trip to the Glenorchy area at the top of Lake Wakatipu, called Scott Creek, Lake Sylvan, and the Glenorchy Races.
I called these “Three good options in one for a New Year holiday in 2025!”
Here’s a map of the area, with Scott Creek at the top, just to the right of the word MOUNTAINS, and Glenorchy at the bottom.
Here’s a photo from last year’s post, of myself reclining partway up Scott Creek on New Year’s Day, 2024.
In this photo from last January — all the rest of the photos in his post are from 2025 — I’m looking down onto the broad, shingly valley of the Dart River / Te Awa Whakatipu, which joins the Rees River (known as Puahiri or Puahere in Māori) to form a huge sand-and-gravel delta and wetland, the Glenorchy Lagoon, next to the township of Glenorchy, at the top of the lake.
The parts of the riverbed that aren’t under the Glenorchy Lagoon or other vegetation are prone to dust storms.
Here is a panned video showing Glenorchy and the Glenorchy Lagoon, followed by a clip of one of the dust storms that often blow across the delta and along the Dart Valley.
Chris went for a walk along the Glenorchy Walkway, which runs through the lagoon, and also watched the annual Glenorchy Races for a while, accidentally filming one rider fall off (this is edited to leave out the details of the fall, which didn’t seem to leave the rider hurt).
Below me, in the photo from last year, is the gravel road that leads to the Sylvan Campsite and the start of the Routeburn Track, at my left. These areas are shown in the following map which is more detailed, and carries on from where the one above leaves off.
The really big mountain above me in the photo is Mount Earnslaw/Pikirakatahi, which is well over nine thousand feet high (2,819 metres to be precise), and thus higher than Mount Ruapehu, the highest mountain in the North Island, at 2,797 m.
It looks like it belongs in the Rockies: a great massive chunk of rock with no particular shape, which the beautiful, conical Mount Taranaki of the North Island could probably be fitted inside several times over.
Yet by South Island standards, Mount Earnslaw is nothing special. There are 37 peaks higher than 2,900 metres in the South Island, and even among those with prominence (‘drop’) of 300 metres or more, Mount Earnslaw still only comes in at number 15 in order of height nationwide, with Ruapehu at number 19.
Even so, Mount Earnslaw and its neighbouring peaks form the rim of a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon. That is perhaps the main reason why the scenery at the top of Lake Wakatipu is so spectacular.
You can see Mount Earnslaw from Bennetts Bluff Lookout, on the way from Queenstown along Lake Wakatipu, though it is partly obscured by cloud in this photo taken by my friend Chris on New Year’s Day, 2025.
Glenorchy is a great place to be based, by the way. There are three main cafe / restaurants these days.
Perhaps the best for cabinet food is Mrs Wooly’s, a general store with an indoor ‘Woolshed’ containing rustic tables and lots of charging points for electronic devices and an outdoor ‘Secret Garden.’ You can also buy all sorts of things there, including groceries, souvenir books, artwork, wine, and merino clothing. Chris says that the beef brisket sandwich is definitely worth trying, along with the Full Monty sundae and the lemon and blueberry cake. All the profits from Mrs Wooly’s go to a local community trust so it is all in a good cause, anyway.
For a more restaurant-like experience, as well as bar service, the Glenorchy Hotel, run by a bloke called Tim Brownie who is just about always on hand, is the place to go. As you can see, it too has an outdoor garden area. And a general store, which advertises itself as selling everything you need and that if they haven’t got it, you don’t need it. Chris tried to buy some flyspray there but they had run out; so, to honour the store’s motto, Tim went and got a partly empty can of his own and gave it to Chris for free.
And then there is Mrs Glen’s, which also has a bar and has the additional advantage of opening earlier in the day than the other two because it provides breakfasts for the attached backpacker hostel.
They’ve all got free Wi-Fi, of course, and they all provide accommodation: a camping ground at Mrs Wooly’s, hotel accommodation at the Glenorchy Hotel, and the hostel at Mrs Glen’s.
They are also within a stone’s throw of each other, Mrs Wooly’s on Oban Street and the other two on Mull Street, where, from 13 January, you can also walk into the new Department of Conservation (DOC) Visitor Centre, in the premises of a former café that was perhaps too small to compete with the other ones.
Behind the war memorial, there was a hall with collages of photos of local identities and a sign advertising the coming of a new museum, though there is already a small one in the middle of town.
Also on Mull Street are the jetboat operators Dart River Adventures (who also have an electric car charger, I notice).
Here are a couple of exciting clips of power boats heading into the delta of the Rees and the Dart, at the start of the sort of adventure offered by Dart River Adventures.
And Heli Glenorchy, for helicopter sightseeing, somewhat pricier no doubt but equally worth it in these parts!
A block over, on Islay Street, there is also a small library and museum, next to a tiny chapel.
From around here, you can also get a good view of the immense Mount Earnslaw and her sisters toward the head of the valley, including Mount Chaos and the Cosmos Peaks, with the ho-hum Mount Alfred/Ari in the middle ground.
And the very tall and barren range to the east of town as well, which seems to be taller than the one to the west.
The school, nearby, has inspiring artwork by the pupils, about local nature and cultural landmarks, from the dust storms to the Earnslaw.
Can’t think of a better place to grow up, really.
The town is named after the original Glen Orchy in Scotland. No doubt, this also explains the names of its older and more central streets, which all seem to refer to the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
Of course, the town itself is not the only attraction in this wonderful area: far from it!
Chris stayed for several nights at the Sylvan Campsite, and was somewhat disappointed to see that the formerly adjacent bridge across the Route Burn, the river that drains the Routeburn Valley, has still not yet been reconstructed, something to which I was looking forward in 2024, imagining that it would surely have been done by now.
The Route Burn remained pretty daunting this time around, full of deep blue water even though the weather was fine, and Chris’s opinion is that Grant and myself were perhaps unwise to have forded it last year when it looked the same; he did not risk it himself. The beancounters in Wellington perhaps fail to appreciate that in this sort of country, bridges are lifesavers. (Here’s a guide to fording New Zealand rivers semi-safely, if you have to).
As a result, there wasn’t a heck of a lot to do at the Sylvan Campsite other than read books in a camping recliner, wisely acquired for the purpose.
What else would have come in useful would have been a larger table and a tent big enough to provide shade as well as rain cover for the recliner and table, as there were few tables and the sun was fierce, the recliner having to be constantly moved in search of shade.
Apart from that, the Sylvan Campsite was populated by many birds, including the white-breasted native robin or toutouwai, a friendly little creature with habits similar to the tickbirds that ride on top of buffaloes in other countries.
The toutouwai will quite happily perch on your shoes to pluck sandflies from your ankles. One even hopped onto Chris’s knee while he was in the recliner, after Chris slapped the same knee three times just to see if the toutouwai would take the hint, as a cat would. Or maybe it just thought he was swatting especially abundant sandflies.
Chris had to shoo one away from the camp cooker when it was cooking, in case it either singed its feathers or fell into the pan.
Here’s a short video of perhaps the same robin, tweeting loudly and flitting around Chris as he tries to read a book.
But even in the absence of the local footbridge, anyone who is based at the Sylvan Campsite can still access Scott Creek by car, as well as the start of the Routeburn Track and the shorter Routeburn Nature Walk, which Chris did one morning.
There is lots of beautiful scenery on the roads between the Sylvan Campsite and Glenorchy, as well. Here’s a photo of some sheep admiring the view at a point roughly halfway.
At the roughly halfway mark, you also come across the Diamond Creek Walk to Lake Reid.
The track goes through rather open farmland next to the creek, which has the bushclad Mount Alfred / Ari on the other side, for some 45 minutes to Lake Reid. It is best to do it in the morning or the evening to avoid the strong sun and lack of shade. Chris didn’t quite get to Lake Reid and is saving that for next time.
Diamond Creek is another really powerful watercourse for its size, one that nobody would dream of crossing on foot. As with the Route Burn, the water is totally clear and you can see all the way to the bottom once more.
Perhaps that is why it is called Diamond Creek. Chris captured some film of its fury and also of its clarity: it hadn’t rained much for at least nine days, whence the dust storms, and yet Diamond Creek still looked like this.
Perhaps it was being fed by melting snow or something.
Were all the lakes and streams once that clear in New Zealand, I wonder? Nowadays, anything that is as clear as the Route Burn or Diamond Creek is the exception.
The next attraction on the road to Glenorchy, once you turn onto the main road (which also leads to Paradise) is Glenorchy Animal Experience, at a high point on the road, so that the farm has a good view down over the valley as well. It costs $NZ 25 for an adult, and it is worth paying another $5 for a bag of sheep nuts with which to hand-feed the large animals, one nut at a time. Most of them pick up the nuts with rubbery lips, though you have to toss the nuts into the mouths of the pigs (as their table manners are not so delicate.)
There are outdoor stalls with large animals and birds and indoor ones with small mammals such as rabbits and guinea pigs, possums, and two little spotted fawns (not that they will be little for long).
And then an open paddock area with a safety sign that you have to stop and read before entering it, under the gaze of a permanent safety observer. It’s mostly common sense about how to behave on a farm (perhaps not all that common, as the joke goes), and includes keeping your bag of sheep nuts hidden so that you don’t get mugged by some of the bigger and more boisterous animals.
The paddock area includes a lookout over the valley.
While he was there, Chris chatted with the proprietors about DOC’s failure to replace the bridge at the Sylvan Campsite on a reasonable time frame. Like everyone else he spoke to about this issue, they seem to be increasingly disappointed at how long it is taking.
This post is also published on medium dot com (publication: A Maverick Traveller) and is freely available there as well.
There’s more about this lovely area in one of my books, The Sensational South Island.
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