Must-see attractions in Queenstown & Wanaka

Shaped like a cartoon lightning bolt, Lake Wakatipu is NZ's third-largest lake. It reaches a depth of 372m, meaning the lake bed actually sits below sea…

Enter past the fence of bras (Bra-drona!) and you'll find the beautiful cellar door of this fledgling single-malt distillery inside a building made of…

Set on its own tongue of land framing Queenstown Bay, this pretty park is the perfect city escape right within the city. Laid out in 1876, it features an…

Hop aboard for fantastic views as the gondola squeezes through pine forest to its grandstand location 400m above Queenstown. At the top there's the…

Wānaka Station Park is a piece of Wānaka that existed before Wānaka did. This remnant of the sheep station that once covered the entire south side of the…

Strung along the creek, near the site of Arrowtown's first gold find, is NZ’s best example of an early Chinese settlement. Interpretive signs explain the…

Mixing Smurfs with Studebakers and skidoos (and an authentic MiG jet fighter flown by the Polish Air Force), this completely eclectic and absorbing…

The area's oldest commercial winery (established in the early 1980s) offers tours of the winery ($35) and NZ's largest wine cave ($20). It also has a…

With gold rushes came lawlessness. Arrowtown's prisoners were originally manacled to logs, but in 1876 this schist jail, now surrounded by homes, was…

Exhibits cover the gold-rush era and the early days of Chinese settlement around Arrowtown. Kids are kept engaged by the likes of an 'Odd One Out' game…

These 2 hectares are home to 10,000 native plants, geckos, skinks, tuatara (an endemic reptile) and scores of birds, including kiwi, kea (alpine parrots),…

It's worth raising a glass to the view alone at Rippon since the Tuscan-styled cellar door has surely the finest winery view in NZ. In a bid to contain…

Peregrine by name, peregrine by design…the award-winning construction of the cellar door, shaped a bit like a falcon's wing in flight, looks particularly…

A 3D Great Maze and lots of fascinating brain-bending visual illusions serve to keep people of all ages bemused, bothered and bewildered at this…

The most picturesque of the Gibbston wineries, Chard Farm's rustic cellar door is reached by a precipitous 2km road overlooking the Kawarau Bridge Bungy…

This pretty Anglican church, built in 1932 from local greywacke stone, has colourful stained glass and an impressive gilded and painted organ. Take a look…

Apart from its impressive Star of David–shaped rose window, this 1874 stone Gothic Revival church, built from local schist rock, wouldn't be worth noting…

Push past the Barbies to get to the beer – the tasting room for the Wanaka Beerworks is rather incongruously at the rear of the toy museum gift shop. Get…

Located in the old underwater observatory beneath the main pier, this 30-minute experience promises a journey back in time, explaining Lake Wakatipu's…

Covering much of the Pisa Range, this conservation reserve has several walking trails through the tussock grass. To get the full show, the 19km tramp to…