Cycle the Lake Dunstan cycle trail and reward your efforts at Carrick Winery. Photo / Anna King Shahab
It’s not easy appeasing every member of the family, but one week in Central Otago delivers big smiles all around, writes Anna King Shahab.
Why would we fly into Queenstown when there’s no snow, asked my adolescent children. It was a question that the following week, spent adventuring around Central Otago in all its late summer glory, answered emphatically.
With summer conspicuously absent from the upper North Island at its so-called peak, alighting at Queenstown airport and heading up through the wheaten landscape of Gibbston felt even more delicious than usual. We were soon settled in at our home for the next five nights – a very roomy serviced 2-bedroom apartment in Central Park, bordering the racetrack at Highlands – and ready for a jam-packed several days of exploration.
The mercury was rising early as we hit the Cromwell Farmers Market, held on Sundays in the town’s heritage precinct. We wandered the courtyard collecting a progressive breakfast – good strong coffee, croissants and doughnuts from Gypsy Oven, Brazilian cheese-filled fried breads from Bia’s Kitchen, as well as juicy cherries, plums, and apricots to snack on during our afternoon ahead on the Lake Dunstan cycle trail.
We met Fletch from Bike It Now! in a quiet car park in Cromwell; she expertly set us up on our e-bikes and ensured we could all ride comfortably before pointing us on our way with the sage advice to keep well to the left and an eye out for speed demons on the trail (happily, the trail ended up being unusually quiet that day).
Rather than riding up to Clyde for a pickup, we did a loop, turning around just before halfway – which is handily marked by an innovative floating coffee and burger joint. Coffee Afloat, which expanded its offering into Burger Afloat – home to not only excellent burgers but also top-notch bacon butties; washed down with a crisp, Wanaka-made Earl Grey kombucha, it was the refuel we all needed. The return ride was even more of a thrill – having becomewell used to working the gears we were flying, more confident on the trail and able to gulp in more of the achingly beautiful scenery. Having hired e-bikes in a few spots previously I can attest that Bike It Now’s fleet is supremely comfortable as well as easy to operate. It was approaching late afternoon by the time we reached Carrick Winery, perfect timing to stop off for a glass of its chilled, bone-dry pinot gris and a rest in a shady spot on the lawn gazing back over the lake to Cromwell.
Staying right on the doorstep of Highlands Motorsport Park, we had to check out what fun was on offer there. A lot, was the answer. Goldfields Jet has been operating out of Highlands for the past few years, a quick van ride takes us to our boarding point on Kawarau River, where we don our life vests and pile into the boat to listen to the briefest safety briefings (basically: hold tight, especially every time the driver makes a spinning signal with his pointer finger) before the whirlwind ride begins. We emerge from the spin cycle on a high: our faces lashed and backs soaked by icy water, cheeks sore from grinning. A fantastic start to the day.
The thrills continue back at Highlands, where we race one another in go karts (yes, the kids beat me, but I don’t let them know it’s because I hung back to protect them from less considerate drivers!). Then we all pile into a Porsche Cayenne with race car driver Tom. This is the ‘Highlands Taxi’ we’d heard raves about from friends who’d done it earlier in the summer. It went like this: Tom took us on a cruise around the course, telling us the history of the park and its quirks (a forested section is pretty special, and there are two spots to try and get air at speed). Suddenly we’re back at the start and Tom’s putting the pedal to the metal… Once I’ve managed to force my eyes open I take in a long corner through the forest at 110km per hour, and the air we gain accelerating over the curved bridge. It’s over in a flash but the four of us are left plastered with grins and buzzing.
More fears were stared down the following late afternoon when we joined Clyde Dam Tours – a first-of-its-kind experience launched in December last year by local shopkeeper Kim Johnstone in partnership with Contact Energy. Over the course of the next few hours there was pretty much nowhere we didn’t poke our noses in, and we were lucky enough to have knowledgeable guide John Youngson, an Otago university lecturer in geology, as well as Contact Energy’s head of hydro-electric generation Boyd Brindson joining us.
We wandered the ‘galleries’ inside the million cubic metres’ worth concrete structure to see the lynchpin of the whole operation – a slip joint, a 2 metre-thick stainless steel wedge that connects the two sides of the dam, held in place purely by water pressure and designed to withstand movement of 2 metres in the event of an earthquake (okay, I trust that but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near here at the time!). We descended into the heart of the beast to see the turbines, and wrapped things up in the control room to chat with the only two staff members on site at the time of day – soon to be down to one for the night shift. Here, workers in the control room not only monitor all the systems, but also trade the electricity on the live market, which is quite unique.
The drive to Naseby is one worth making – the Central Otago Touring Route offers up a continuous eyeful of Graham Sydney landscape: blonde waves of hills peppered with rickety sheds, blue sky brushed with white. Chatto Creek Tavern made a good pitstop with its peaceful beer garden and tiny former post office plastered with history, and we struck picturesque gold with a short detour to Ophir, boasting plenty of gold-mining heritage including another notable post office, the country’s oldest.
It being summer didn’t stop us from trying our hands (and rubber-slippered feet) at the local sport, curling. Naseby Curling Centre is the only indoor curling facility in the southern hemisphere and offers beginner lessons; we got a thorough demonstration from rink manager Ewan Kirk then got stuck into some family competitiveness. I reckon we were beginning to perfect the old flick of the wrist in releasing the granite stones and nifty speedy sweeping by the time our session came to an end.
Emerging into the late afternoon sun, the time was ripe for a dip in Naseby Swimming Dam – a firefighting reservoir on the edge of the forest, complete with diving board; according to half our party it made for good TikTok content. A hearty pub dinner in the convivial, heritage setting of The Royal Hotel was the cherry on top of another wonderful day in Central.
Rounding off our time in the region, we finished our stay with some good fruity fun learning about what goes on behind the scenes in this food bowl of Aotearoa. At Jackson’s Orchards, Colleen welcomed us on board the yellow electric bus for a 45-minute tour of the property, moving at a relaxing pace through lush tunnels of stonefruit and pipfruit trees, hearing about the immense amount of planning and work that goes into producing the fruit we know and love, but perhaps take for granted at times. Everything grown here is consumed here in Aotearoa.
It takes a team of 70 to make it all happen in the busy months, with onsite accommodation provided. Orchard owner Kevin originally had an orchard in the gorge and moved to this site after the dam flooding took place. He’s not one to issue orders from afar: aged 80, he alone mows the lawns on the 35-hectare orchard, a task that takes him eight days. He also joins the teams of workers; we met him having a smoko break with a team picking apricots.
At Cheeki Cherries, we added to our carry-on luggage allowance. Despite the prospect of good prices in the export market, Martin prefers to keep the orchard here open for pick-your-own visitors. We head off with a couple of buckets and soon have almost three kilos of stunningly juicy, flavoursome dark cherries to be weighed and paid for. At $17 per kilo, it’s a fun activity, with a delicious aftertaste. It turned out we would all cherish that aftertaste even more deeply than usual, as the following day the summer floods hit our home city in time for our return there. Our six days in sunny Central instantly gilded in our memories as a magical time in a magical place.
There were, naturally, too many food and drink highlights of this trip to cover off in this piece – keep an eye out in The Hungry Traveller column for a Central Otago roundup soon.
For more to see and do in Central Otago, visit centralotagonz.com/tourism-central-otago
OPINION: Gen Z ironic ambiguity, millennial normcore, and boomer cheese. We dive in.