Queenstown, NZ -- a beautiful tourist town

Here’s how Queenstown is advertised on it advertising website:  “Queenstown, New Zealand, sits on the shores of the South Island’s Lake Wakatipu, set against the dramatic Southern Alps. Renowned for adventure sports, it’s also a base for exploring the region’s vineyards and historic mining towns. There's bungee jumping off Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge and jet-boating on the Shotover and Dart rivers. In winter, there's skiing on the slopes of The Remarkables and Coronet Peak.”

All of that seems quite accurate (not that we did much of it), but what the blurb failed to mention is the downtown shopping area – full of New Zealand memorabilia, including some expensive merino wood sweaters, jewelry, bars, upscale shopping boutiques – anything one could want, plus some.  Fun to amble around the car-free area, but that’s not all we did.

The restaurant we went to last night fulfilled our expectations of savory and tender lamb – The Grille by Eichardt’s.  Highly recommended by all of us.  Harold and I shared a made-for-two lamb shoulder, and it was delicious, as was everyone else’s meal.  No need to order lamb again.  In case you haven’t figured it out, the lamb/sheep meals had not met with our expectations previous to this meal: they were extremely tender but woefully bland.  Not this one though.  It was delicious.

The second morning day in Queenstown, we went on a wonderful multi-hour tour, including a 45-minute steamboat ride across Lake Wakatipu to Walter Peak’s sheep station where we viewed a sheep shearing demonstration, a sheep dog demonstration, ate at a wonderful barbecue, took a walk around the beautiful flowered grounds (they must have a lot of weddings here), and then took a ride back to Queenstown on the same steamboat.

Although chilly outside, the steamboat experience was memorable.  The boat – the TSS Earsnlaw -- was built in 1912 but fell into disuse in the 1960s.  However “Real Journeys” refit it and now it is delighting customers in Queenstown.  The down side: it takes one ton of coal every hour to keep it running.  Yikes.  It holds 7 tons of coal, and since it runs 14 hours a day, it is loaded twice. Black smoke pours from its smokestack :-(.

But it was an interesting and beautiful ride, although chilly.

We arrived at the Walter Peak Sheep Station.  Big operation with lots of land!  20,000 sheep: 15,000 merino, and 5,000 of two other kinds, one with a coarser wool used for things like carpets and one used totally for food.  They also added some diversity by keeping 7000-10,000 cattle.

Walter Peak Station from the water

It was the first time we had seen sheep shearing “live,” and the shearer did an excellent job of taking us through the process.  He used a lamb which had never been sheared before, so the lamb was easy to handle and quite docile.  They shear lambs twice a year the first year, and then once a year after that.  They get about $2.00 for the stack of merino wool that comes from one lamb (it seemed like quite a large stack), and the shearer makes $2 for each lamb/sheep sheared, so the shearers don’t waste any time in the process.

Next he demonstrated the excellence of his sheep dogs who brought 4 sheep from the top of the hill in front of us down to the area where we were sitting.  Impressive work and fun to watch.

Then we had a fabulous barbecue buffet: lamb, beef, pork, sweet meats, chicken – and even more with all the trimmings.  Everything was delicious.

one of our chefs at his "barbie"

We strolled around the beautiful flowered grounds for a bit before we got on our steamboat for the 45-minute trip back across the lake.

Once back in town, we split up and ambled around the stores.  Deborah bought a necklace and gloves/headband, and Julie also bought gloves (okay – it was chilly out!).  Julie also picked up a couple of gifts, and then we headed back to our beautiful condo to wash clothes and to have a cocktail before we headed out for dinner at Blue Kanu, a fusion restaurant serving “Polynesia” fare, mixing Asian flavors with a Pacific influence.  We had the multi-course sharing meal; it was a lot of food and none of us were super impressed. . . .