After leaving arresting Arrowtown, Steven and I drove toward Arrow Junction Lookout via the Alpine Scenic Road. Considering the sunny blue skies we'd enjoyed all morning had disappeared, and we had overcast skies, the views were still magnificent.
From the top of the lookout, we could see the hairpin turns we'd taken up to the lookout! The tricky switchbacks had been worth the stunning views of rugged peaks, small farms, and the Lake District.
It was just a short hop, skip, and jump from the lookout to the Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge, where two leaps of faith took place. New Zealand was transformed in 1861 following the discovery of gold. The resulting economic growth inspired the construction of this bridge to improve road access to the Otago goldfields. In 1880, a daring new bridge design was introduced. The challenge for engineer Harry Higginson was a sheer rocky gorge that funneled destructive side winds. Higginson was aware that several bridges in other countries had been destroyed by high winds.
To meet this challenge, he combined a range of innovative strengthening solutions, including inward-sloping cables, to construct a suspension bridge that was 42m high with a 120m-long span. The design proved economical and enduring. The work won the world’s top engineering award in 1882.
The other leap of faith, quite literally, was that this is the birthplace of bungee tourism, where people jump every day from the equivalent of a 10-story building, held safe by just a giant elastic band around their ankles. In 1988 A. J. Hackett launched the world’s first commercial bungee-jumping venture here, which has since grown into an international attraction. The bridge and the surrounding site were featured in the Lord of the Rings films and is on the Queenstown Trail Arrow River Bridges cycle route.
I had hoped to watch some adventurous soul go on a roughly $200 bungee jump off the bridge, but there were no takers when I walked across the bridge.
Aren't these hysterical images?!
I found it odd that unlike other suspension bridges I've walked across, there was no give in this one.
As we drove toward Cromwell, which we'd passed through quickly a couple of days previously en route to the exciting Shotover Canyon boat ride, we passed one after vineyard and winery after another. I took a picture of Pagan Winery, but could just as easily taken one of many others.
Virtually all the grapevines were covered with white netting. It either indicated either grape bloom, a harmless, natural waxy coating on the fruit, or powdery mildew, a common, destructive fungal disease. I wish I knew which it was.
The principal feature of any little New Zealand town is undoubtedly its 'Main Street,' where the verandaed shop fronts conjured visions of horses and buggies and the slow passing of time. But not Cromwell in Central Otago as its Main Street lay under Lake Dunstan which was formed as a storage reservoir for the dam 23km downstream in Clyde. Some of its historic buildings were saved or dismantled and rebuilt on an adjacent higher site and called the Cromwell Historic Precinct.
We were so lucky that the rain stopped as we entered the Precinct, located at the confluence of the Kawarau and Clutha arms of Lake Dunstan. Before the town was flooded, Old Cromwell consisted of 280 homes, 6 farms and 17 orchards.
The Precinct featured numerous schist, 19th-century stone cottages and shops originally from the town's 1860s gold rush era when sparsely populated Otago was suddenly inundated with thousands of hopeful prospectors. The result was a precinct with a mixture of museum-type buildings open daily for people to walk through and others tenanted by local artisans.
The initial Post Office was a small wooden hut in 1869 until a more substantial building was commissioned by the government and completed in 1871. As the region expanded during the gold dredging boom, the building received extensions in 1900 and 1915. When the Clyde Dam was completed in 1990, this building was meticulously reconstructed and saved to form a core part of the Heritage Precinct.
The Belfast Store originally opened as a wine, spirit, and provision merchant store.
Though the Cromwell Masonic Lodge was established in 1870, the building wasn't constructed until 1900.
Murrell's Cottage was one of just three buildings on its original site in the Historic Precinct. Built of the local schist rock, it was the laundry and storage addition to the corrugated main house. Edward Murrell, a Scotsman who emigrated to NZ in 1861, started the first jewelry and watch business in Cromwell before entering local politics. Murrell became a keen winemaker and was thought to make wines in the cool stone cottage.
He used to play a game with his customers, with the winning prize being one of his bottles of wine. He would find a fly in the shop, put down two sugar cubes, and ask the customer which one the fly would land on. He usually won, however, because he'd put down an old sugar cube, because the knew flies would invariably land on the old one!
The Cobb & Co. Storeroom was built in 1866 for an Australian coaching company which came to NZ at the beginning of the gold rush era to travel up from Dunedin, before stopping overnight in Cromwell en route to Wanaka or Queenstown. The company, which provided three trips a week between Dunedin and Queenstown, continued service until the arrival of train service to Cromwell in 1917.
The London Stables, situated behind the Belfast Store we'd just seen, were accessed by a lane down the side of the shop and were likely livery stables for people visiting Cromwell. In the late 1880s, the main mode of transport in Cromwell and the District was by horse or horse-drawn conveyance. Livery stables provided casual stabling for horses and wagons for people while shopping, visiting, or staying overnight.
It was very impressive to see how the thousands and thousands of volunteer hours created the precinct from a wasteland with original buildings restored with precision and faithful reconstructions to the original. It seemed a shame, however, that there were only two French couples wandering around Cromwell when we were there, because the delightful area deserved more support in my mind.
Steven and I were later absolutely charmed by the modern town of Cromwell and its many parks and trails, handsome homes, and spectacular views.
We then followed the Otago Touring Route across the Clutha River where we had glorious views from the Bruce Jackson Lookout.
We followed the narrow road paralleling the river, enjoying breathtaking views.
After seeing the buildings in Cromwell made with schist rock, we were curious to view the rounded hills of schist rock punctuated with large craggy standing rocks along the river. By the way, schist is described as a medium-grade metamorphic rock famous for its glittering appearance and wavy, layered texture.
Before exploring the Clyde Dam, we walked around the town of the same name. On the main street was the historic Commercial Hotel, now the Lord Clyde, a Victorian-style structure built in 1903.
Clyde was the dominant settlement of the Central Otago region until nearby Alexandra built a bridge over the Clutha River and seized power. That resulted in drawing developers' attention away from Clyde, which was why there so many turn-of-the-century buildings still remained.
Footprints in Time, historical plaques embedded on the sidewalks, told of notable people in the town's history. One was Fleur Sullivan who purchased the historic Dunstan House, a saloon dating to the 1860s gold rush, and restored it in 1967 before moving out of the area. The stone building was originally constructed in 1900, now operating as a hotel and cafe.
Sullivan returned to Clyde in 1981 and established a Provençal-style Kiwi restaurant and lodge, Olivers, across the street. She helped make Clyde a national destination in the 80s and 90s and "taught us all to treasure the historic town."
If we didn't already have accommodation in Queenstown, I'd loved to have stayed at the captivating Hazlett's Cottage on Clyde's main street.
Sign outside a local cafe!
Crossing the historic, single-lane, truss Earnscleugh Bridge spanning the Clutha River, we had scenic views of the surrounding rugged hills. When it opened in 1934, it was designed to sit in part on the piers of the 1881 bridge it replaced.
The Clyde Dam was the largest concrete dam in the country with a million cubic meters of concrete used in its construction. Its height was 100m, the width at the base was 70m, and it was 490m long. As I alluded to earlier, there was controversy to its building because so many homes, farms, and orchards were removed from the Cromwell Gorge to allow the river valley's flooding.
On our return to Queenstown, we passed many more wineries.
The Lake Hayes (Horse) Showground was by no means the first we'd seen while driving through rural New Zealand.
Scenes from Queenstown that night including an 1864 cottage, Lake Wakatipu, the rousing Irish Pub where we grabbed dinner, and nighttime lake cruises:
Next post: Heading south to Invercargill, a must-stop for petrol-heads except if you're Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones!
Posted on June 22nd, 2026, from our home in Littleton, outside of Denver, after our long adventure. My goal is to finish posting about New Zealand, then write about our month in Western Australia, and hopefully our brief time in Timor Leste, and Bali, before we leave again in mid-September for a 10-week trip to Europe. Our three weeks in Taiwan will have to wait until goodness only knows when! Please take care of yourself and your loved ones.
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