over the hill: Kawarau Gorge

The Kawarau River runs along the highway between Cromwell to Queenstown. Near the Cromwell end is the Kawarau Gorge.

As I grew up in the Bay of Plenty (North Island), I keep wanting to spell it Kawerau. But no, that's another place, and this is definitely "Kawarau River/Gorge" spelt with an "a"!

This area has a history of gold mining—as you're travelling through the gorge, there's a place you can stop and visit an old gold mining site. There's this pulley thing that goes across the river. I'm not sure what it's for, but I don't think I'd trust it to get ME safely from one side to the other!

This is also the place where the Goldfields Jet picks up passengers.

A little further down the road we pulled over and noticed, on the other side of the river, some little huts. They're smack bang in the middle of the picture. These, apparently, are miners huts. there is a closer view in the following two photos.

And further along, another hut.

Travelling towards Queenstown, we came across Roaring Meg. That's the name of the river that feeds into this power station and then the Kawarau River. Apparently, the gold miners named this "turbulent stream" Roaring Meg after a noisy red-headed Irish barmaid, Maggie Brennan. As the story goes, an early party of diggers took two girls with them from a dancing saloon. When they reached the first large stream, they carried the girls across. The first one, Maggie, made such a fuss that they named it after her (Roaring Meg) whereas the other girl was calm and placid and so they named the next stream after her (Gentle Annie).

Another notable place to visit along the Kawarau River is the Kawarau Bridge Bungy. Dave did this on our last trip down this way, some years ago. Not something we needed to repeat. I think it must have been on his bucket list—definitely not mine! This photo was taken from across the other side of the gorge.