Queenstown is, hands down, the adventure capital of the world, and the place where commercial bungy was born in 1988. Wedged between Lake Wakatipu, impossibly blue and shaped like a lightning bolt, and the jagged ridgeline of The Remarkables, this small town packs more adrenaline per square metre than almost anywhere else on the planet: bungy jumping, jet boating, skydiving, paragliding, rafting, skiing in winter and alpine hikes. All against a breathtaking, postcard-perfect backdrop.
But Queenstown isn't just about adrenaline. It's also wine (you're in Central Otago, the world's southernmost Pinot Noir region), it's food, it's the historic gold-mining town of Arrowtown 20 minutes away, it's the gateway to Milford Sound and to the Lord of the Rings landscapes around Glenorchy. You can spend the morning throwing yourself off a bridge and the afternoon tasting wine by the lake, and both feel equally Queenstown.
This guide covers the best of Queenstown with a practical, fact-checked approach: how much each bungy jump and jet boat ride costs, how to ride the Skyline gondola, how to get to Milford Sound without the prices making you dizzy, where to eat the famous Fergburger, how to get around on the NZ$2 bus and when to go depending on whether you want snow or sun. Everything you need to plan your trip to the adventurous heart of the South Island with no surprises.
Queenstown is Tāhuna ('shallow bay' or 'shallow beach') to the Ngāi Tahu people, who visited Lake Whakatipu seasonally to hunt, fish and search for pounamu (greenstone). According to tradition, the S-shaped lake is the imprint of the giant Matau, whose heart still beats at the bottom and explains the mysterious rise and fall of its waters. The European William Gilbert Rees set up a sheep station in 1860 where the town centre stands today; the discovery of gold in the Arrow River in 1862 sparked a rush that filled the area with miners, and the town took the name Queenstown in January 1863. After the gold ran out, adventure tourism reinvented it in the 20th century. The full story (Ngāi Tahu, the giant Matau, the gold and the birth of bungy) is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The “Edinburgh of the South”: settled by Scottish Presbyterians of the Free Church in 1848 around Dunedin, it became the country’s richest province with the 1861 gold rush. Land of Ngāi Tahu, of the alpine lakes of Queenstown and Wanaka, and of the adventure capital of the world.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before bungy jumps and gondolas existed, this cold, lightning-bolt-shaped lake already had a name and owners. For the Ngāi Tahu people, the main iwi (tribe) of the South Island, the place where Queenstown stands today is Tāhuna, which in te reo Māori means 'shallow bay' or 'beach with shallow water'. The lake is Whakatipu Waimāori, and its origin is told in one of the best-loved stories in the whole of southern New Zealand.
According to Ngāi Tahu tradition, an evil giant called Matau kidnapped Manata, a chief's daughter. Her father promised her hand in marriage to whoever rescued her, and a brave young man called Matakauri went after her. He found her while the giant was in a deep sleep, set her free and, to make sure Matau would never trouble anyone again, set him on fire as he slept. The heat was so intense that it melted the snow on the mountains, and the giant's body sank into the earth, leaving a huge 'S'-shaped hollow: knees bent, head at one end, feet at the other. That hollow filled with water and became Lake Whakatipu.
The amazing thing is that the real geography matches the legend: Lake Wakatipu really does have a crooked 'S' shape. And there's a detail the Ngāi Tahu explain with the story: the lake's water rises and falls by about 12 centimetres every so often, a real phenomenon (an oscillation called a seiche, caused by wind and pressure). According to tradition, it's Matau's heart, still beating at the bottom of the lake. The Ngāi Tahu didn't live on the lake permanently, but they visited it on seasonal expeditions to hunt birds and fish, gather food and, above all, look for pounamu (jade or greenstone), the most valuable material in their culture, which they used to make tools and sacred ornaments. The whole southern lakes region was part of their takiwā (territory), crossed by ancient pounamu trade routes.
The first European to see Lake Wakatipu was Nathanael Chalmers, in September 1853, guided across the Waimea Plains by Reko, a Māori chief. But the man who founded Queenstown was William Gilbert Rees, a Welsh pastoralist and explorer who in 1860 set up a large sheep station exactly where the town centre is today. Rees built his house facing what is now Queenstown Bay and had barely two years of peace before his life changed forever.
In 1862 gold was discovered in the Arrow River and the Shotover, and one of the most frenzied gold rushes in New Zealand history broke out. The Shotover became known as 'the richest river in the world' for the amount of gold taken from it. Thousands of miners arrived from everywhere — including many who came from the exhausted goldfields of California and Victoria (Australia) — and Rees's quiet farming valley was suddenly turned into a hive of activity. Rees himself, ever practical, converted his woolshed into a hotel: the Queen's Arms, which still exists today as the elegant Eichardt's, on the lakefront.
The town grew at a dizzying pace. By early 1864 Queenstown already had several shops, bars, a post office, a local newspaper, Anglican and Catholic churches and a sawmill. On 5 January 1863 the settlement officially adopted the name Queenstown, probably in honour of Queenstown in Ireland (now Cobh), a port that had been renamed after a visit by Queen Victoria. The gold rush also brought thousands of Chinese miners, who worked the claims abandoned by Europeans in extremely harsh conditions and faced fierce racism; their story is remembered today at the moving Chinese Settlement in Arrowtown, the neighbouring mining town that has been preserved like a time capsule.
When the surface gold ran out, towards the end of the 19th century, the rush died down as quickly as it had begun. Many miners left and Queenstown turned into a quiet service town surrounded by large sheep stations (the high country stations), such as Ben Lomond Station, which at one point covered 32,000 acres. The economy came to revolve around wool, high-country farming and a budding tourism trade of people who came to enjoy the lake and the mountains.
The great symbol of that era is the TSS Earnslaw, a coal-fired twin-screw steamer launched in 1912 and nicknamed 'the Lady of the Lake'. Before there were decent roads, the Earnslaw was the region's lifeline: it carried passengers, sheep, mail and supplies to the remote stations scattered along the shores of the vast Lake Wakatipu. More than a century later, she is still sailing, now as one of the town's best-loved tourist attractions, taking visitors across to Walter Peak station.
For much of the 20th century, Queenstown was a quiet, somewhat isolated holiday spot, known for its scenery but far from the hustle and bustle. The town grew slowly, the population was small and few would have imagined that this mountain town, tucked away among lakes and sheep stations, was about to become the world's mecca of adrenaline. The isolation that had kept it asleep would, paradoxically, end up being its greatest asset: untouched mountains, wild rivers and pristine nature waiting for a generation in search of thrills.
The turning point has a precise date and place: on 12 November 1988, at the historic Kawarau Bridge on the outskirts of Queenstown, New Zealander AJ Hackett and skier Henry van Asch opened the world's first commercial bungy jumping site. Hackett had been inspired by the ritual vine jumps of the 'land divers' of Pentecost Island (Vanuatu) and, after a spectacular illegal jump from the Eiffel Tower in 1987 that made him famous, he looked for a place to turn the idea into a business. The old Kawarau suspension bridge, over a canyon of turquoise water, turned out to be perfect.
Bungy was just the beginning. On that foundation, Queenstown completely reinvented itself as the 'adventure capital of the world'. Within a few years, jet boating through the Shotover canyons (making use of another New Zealand invention), rafting, skydiving, paragliding, ziplining and dozens of other ways to get scared for money were all thriving. The town learned to sell not just the adrenaline but the incomparable setting where it happens: every jump, every flight and every descent has the lake and the mountains of The Remarkables as a backdrop.
At the same time, Queenstown developed a strong ski industry (Coronet Peak, The Remarkables, with Cardrona and Treble Cone nearby), a top-class food and wine scene — Central Otago is now the southernmost and most prestigious Pinot Noir region in the world — and huge film tourism: the landscapes of Glenorchy and the surrounding area appear in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia and Mission: Impossible, among many others. The town also became a magnet for seasonal work for young people from all over the world.
That success brought its own tensions. Explosive growth sent prices soaring: in 2022 an average house in the Lakes District cost more than NZ$1.7 million and renting a three-bedroom place cost from NZ$800 a week, which created an acute housing crisis for the workers who keep tourism going. Overtourism and pressure on the environment are constant debates. Today Queenstown faces the challenge of any place that's too successful: how to keep growing without destroying what made it magical. And, more and more, how to give a central place back to the history and culture of the Ngāi Tahu, the true tangata whenua (people of the land) of the lake of the sleeping giant, whose name — Tāhuna — is gradually being heard again alongside that of the queen who gave the town its European name.
