Getting to Know Queenstown and Ben Lomond

On November 16, 2015, after spending a wonderful weekend with Lizzy, Kenny, Beau and Keegan, and recovering from our long flight from the States, we caught a flight down to Queenstown on the South Island, the renowned jumping-off community for all things Southern Alps and some of the most famous hiking tracks in the world.

The city of Queenstown is smaller and friendlier than we expected.  It is oriented to outdoors activities and tourists.  Situated picturesquely on a bay of Lake Wakatipu, it is overshadowed by mighty Ben Lomond, a mountain rising to 5,735 feet above sea level:

As we were walking around the harbor, we stumbled on a long stone wall that bore a stonecut inscription - a poem about this region by a local poet:

Here is the full poem:

Waipounamu (Wall Poem)

Hoisting history on his back like a sugar-sack,

the swagger strides along greenstone trails.

All night the crib creeks are humming home,

and drowned towns float in their canvas shrouds.

They are just the ghosts of their original selves,

an emotional investment looted by snow-melt for

schemes to answer the Question of Illumination.

To tap this yearning for a golden age,

singing shepherds held wisps of tussock

which curled like lighted Chinese joss-sticks

on the fan-tan tables of sly-grog dens,

frozen in that glacier known as the past.

In the forgotten graveyards, hair grows into grass,

while wind sifts the sweet vernal over and over,

like diggers letting gold dust pour through their fingers.

The Kingston Flyer is chuffing

on the Great Northern Railway to Wakatipu.

John Turnbull Thompson cut the runholders loose

with a panoramic survey and the confidence of a faithhealer

in the middle of Queen Victoria's Royal Century,

when the boom-time harvest of Celtic place-names

seeded Central like a nouveau-Hibernian dialect

from Balclutha to Gimmerburn to Glendhu Bay.

Winter arrives on time in a glitzblitz of powdery snow.

The hoar-frost is a Quarztopolis of ice crystals,

turning weeping willows into frozen chandeliers.

Some strung the coils of Number Eight wire into fences

as trail bikes took to the State Highway with a roar

and the rainshower passed like a plume

over small towns that are hardly seen for hills.

Tarns prickle with bubbles from upland soakage

at the start of Wakatipu on Mounts Humboldt and Forbes,

Pasture stands four-square

to the intersection of Lakes Hawea and Wanaka, from where

Nat Chalmers shot the gorge in a flax raft with his guides

after descending Mount Difficulty in flax sandals,

the first Pakeha to see Lake Wakatipu, for which he paid

Reko and Kaikoura a three-legged pot - Te Kohoa!

Vipers Bugloss is the honeyed heart of the hive

and verandah shadows are dark as delphiniums.

The four-fold path of the farmer leads to hot and cold taps,

the meat-safe's a muslin bag, but the kerosene lamp's gone

the way of Aunt Daisy's and Uncle Scrim's voices on the wireless

or goals from The Boot and Pine-Tree when Rugby took a capital.

Braids of rivers run dreadlock plaits from a taniwha's

stone head, so his blind eyes spurt waterfalls

and his chest is the sucking valley of a mudslide,

when swollen rivers heave against mountain flanks

and sinkholes laden with silt roar Old Man Flood's here!

He'd ride the whaleboat Molyneux from its tributaries

to the sea, or disgorge the Matau of its spears and hooks,

if they hadn't drained the hydro-electricity, way back.

Rivers rule our lives, gurgling, puddling, dripping,

working the lake country round like greenstone,

turning out a tiki of interlocking curves flowing

into Waipounamu, which breathes its green glow,

because the lake environs are a home territory

of purple grape froth trickling a ripe roses scent

and beetroot palate into our salad day memories.

Views of the lake in its many moods: sometimes quiescent,

like a windowpane stippled with rain, behind which

cucumber leafage and swollen twigs revolve, and you

can imagine fridgefuls of rare home-brews,

or spiced-plum brandy, tots doled out to travellers;

sometimes waves snapping fierce enough to whip out

all the tent-pegs in Canvastown, with a wind able

to upturn a wedding marquee's trestle tables tomorrow.

Days of wooden coach wheels bumping out of the Ida Valley

on the Old Dunstan Road in journeys of the pioneers.

Days releasing meteorological balloons into a delicate apricot sky

in this landscape we invent, as it invents us —

from rock flake and springwater, from a skiff of froth

tumbling over a weir into the afterglow of the Aurora.

We stayed in a bed and breakfast on Queenstown Hill above the city.  From our neighborhood, we had a grand view of The Remarkables, a dramatic range of mountains that featured in some scenes of the Lord of the Rings movies:

After a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast at one of Queenstown's quaint cafes, we rode the gondola up from the heart of the city to Bob's Peak, which is the popular name for Cemetery Hill, a smaller peak on the flank of Ben Lomond.  Here is a view of Bob's Peak and the gondola center from below in Queenstown Harbor:

It didn't take long for us to rise high above the city and lake as we rode the gondola:

Here is a view of the city and lake, with The Remarkables in the background, from the top of the gondola on Bob's Peak:

After looking about, we continued up the Ben Lomond Track toward the big mountain itself:

Our lunch stop came with a spectacular view!

Finally, we reached the saddle between Ben Lomond (in the background below) and an adjoining peak.  Kathy was inspired by the view, and she shows it in the photo below:

Having quenched our thirst for panoramic views, we hiked back down to the top of Bob's Peak, and indulged ourselves in a little luge ride before riding the gondola back down into Queenstown:

This was an invigorating hike and gave us a clue what spectacular scenery we were going to see during the coming week!