Te Anau to Queenstown

 

Sunrise at Lake Te Anau.

 

Mossburn, the deer capital of NZ.

Deer farming was pioneered here in the early 1970s with the recovery of wild live deer from Fiordland.  Venison production is now a large part of the town’s economy.  Pat had a venison casserole for dinner tonight, and the meat was very tender and flavoursome.

This statue is a popular photo stop for passing tourists.

 

A wind farm generating sufficient power for 30,000 homes was opened in Mossburn in 2007.  Presumably, they are able to sell the electricity as the population of Mossburn in 2006 was only 240.

 

We followed the amazingly blue Lake Wakatipu into Queenstown.

 

View from the restaurant on the Steamer Wharf in Queenstown, where we had lunch.

 

While we were sitting at the Steamer Wharf having lunch, in came the steamer, the restored Earnshaw, which is 100 years old this year, and plied a very busy trade the whole time we were in Queenstown cruising tourists around the very beautiful Lake Wakatipu.

Pat read in the paper the next day that a Chinese delegation had been out on the Earnshaw the day we arrived.  Maybe this is them on the boat now.

Cruising on 16th April 2012.