Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Ooh…er…mmm…(Doubtful Sound)

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Tuesday 17 March 2026 – RealNZ has an exclusive on tours to the glowworm caves, and it appears that they are also the only operator to offer a tour to Doubtful Sound, which, with Milford Sound, are the two soundest things to do around these parts. So, after a very decent breakfast at Dunluce, we headed into downtown Te Anau, with its takahē sculpture,

and took a coffee before presenting ourselves once again at the RealNZ office on the waterfront for a whole day outing.

The reason that it’s a whole day outing is that Doubtful Sound is basically inaccessible unless you sail up the west coast and enter it from the Tasman Sea. RealNZ have created a different way of getting there by exploiting an approach route set up for something completely else and patching it into a package which takes you from Te Anau via a bus, a boat and another bus to a boat which goes out on the Sound. It’s rather reminiscent of our journey in South America from Bariloche to Puertas Varas, but without the awkwardness of crossing national borders. Here’s a rough map in case it helps understand how everything fits together.

Our first (and last) driver was a very jocular Yorkshireman called Josh. Based on his accent, I wanted to call him the driver from Hull, but annoyingly he came from somewhere near Huddersfield. He took us through some wonderful morning light and weather

to the RealNZ wharf in Manapōuri where our boat awaited us.

This boat took us across Lake Manapōuri (proudly New Zealand’s second deepest lake) for about an hour. It was still earlyish in the day and the wind hadn’t ruffled the waters too much, so to start with there were some nice reflections of the impressive scenery to be photographed.

As I was taking these photos, standing on the rear outside deck of the boat, I was irritated to hear a Brit holding forth loudly to some poor souls near him on his favourite subject – himself. Fortunately, before too long the skipper gunned the engines and I could no longer hear him. Imagine my surprise on returning to join Jane in the lounge, to find that he had glommed on to her for a ~~chat~~ listen. So we were treated to his itinerary around New Zealand, which was quite short because he said his wife wouldn’t let him go for an longer. Frankly, I would have thought that she would have been content with some more peace and quiet. After a while, in self-defence, I went back out to take more photos. Fortunately, it’s generally a very scenic crossing; Lake Manapōuri is considered (by newzealand.com, at least) to be New Zealand’s loveliest lake, and it does have some great scenery.

This boat took us to the furthest reaches of the lake, called West Arm, where, as we approached, we could see some very considerable evidence of a large power station;

pylons to left and right, with, strung between them, cables covering a 1.8km span – that’s over a mile long. By the cables on the right (northern) bank was the external evidence of the power station, which, in its way, was the reason we were able to visit Doubtful Sound by the route we were taking.

At the West Arm RealNZ visitor centre, we transferred to three coaches and were driven the 21km across Wilmot Pass to Deep Cove, at the eastern end of Doubtful Sound. Our driver was a South African called Johnny, who had a very dry sense of humour. For example, on a steep downhill section, he reassured us that the coach’s brakes were tested – once a year, and that test was due to be done tomorrow.

He explained that the road he was driving us on was a key part of developing the huge hydro-electric power station we’d seen, Manapōuri Power Station. The original plan, in around 1969, had been quite radical – simply raise the level of Lake Manapōuri by some 30 metres via a huge dam to merge it with Lake Te Anau and – hey presto! – lots of hydro power available to be generated from this superlakive source of water. The reason to attempt this enormous power generation? All stemmed from the 1955 discovery by one Harry Evans, a New Zealand geologist with Consolidated Zinc Proprietary Ltd, of a 2.5 billion tonne deposit of bauxite in Australia on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula – the largest deposit of bauxite that had ever been discovered. A company called Comalco (now owned by Rio Tinto) was created to exploit its smelting into aluminium, with a smelter near Bluff, nominating Lake Manapōuri as the power source. Without public consultation, the Second Labour Government under Walter Nash signed a deal in January 1960 that would allow Comalco to build the dam and associated tunnels to lead the outflow water to the nearby Waiau River.

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot of people disapproved of this idea, roughly 50-60 square kilometres of native forests and wetlands would have been permanently submerged; but successive governments ignored protest. A book, Heritage Destroyed, written in 1960 by entomologist Dr. John Salmon at Victoria University, advocated an end to hydropower projects that sacrificed the environmental value of the land they submerged, and this was a seed that grew eventually, in 1969, to the Save Manapouri campaign, which became a significant part of the awakening to a realisation of the damage that big business could cause to the environment, not just in New Zealand, but internationally. Environmental Activism was born (which is a Good Thing until its over-enthusiastic application results in, oh, I dunno, a UK £100million cost for a railway tunnel to protect some bats, for example).

Long story short, the dam did not go ahead. Instead, a new plan was drawn up which didn’t involve raising the level of Lake Manapōuri; instead the turbine hall was built deep inside the mountain, some 200m below the lake surface, with water flowing vertically down to several turbines. The new plan did involve drilling a long tunnel between West Arm and Deep Cove for the outflow of the turbines to empty into Doubtful Sound. Drilling was planned from both locations, but it turned out that getting men, machinery and materials to Deep Cove – accessible only by sea – was impracticable and ruinously expensive. So someone, it seemed, piped up with “Why don’t we just build a road between West Arm and Deep Cove? What could possibly go wrong?” Quite a lot, it turned out, as there was a lot of very tough rock to be blasted through, and the eventual cost of the road was NZ$2 per centimetre. That’s $200,000 per kilometre and there were 21 of those needed.

This, then was the road that Johnny drove us along, pausing at a high point so that we could get our first glimpse of Doubtful Sound in the distance.

Having debussed at RealNZ’s Deep Cove visitor hut, we milled around being bitten by sandflies until we were allowed on to the somewhat larger and more comfortable boat which would be taking us around the Sound on a 3-hour cruise, with commentary from a guide.

Again, the scenery was quite dramatic,

but I have to say that once you’ve seen one huge lump of fjord-adjacent terrain covered in rainforest, you’ve pretty much seen ’em all, so it was easier to appreciate the scenery rather than to try to take more photos. A break in the unchanging nature of the view came as we entered the Tasman Sea at the mouth of the Sound.

At this point, the guide explained a couple of things about Doubtful Sound: firstly, because the whole thing has been carved out by glacial activity, it’s a fjord, not a sound (and the same applies, by the way to the rather more widely-known Milford Sound); secondly, the name comes as a consequence of the prevailing winds, which are westerly and therefore blow into the sound. The area was mapped and charted by Cook on his voyages around the islands. Before venturing into the sound, he assessed the risks associated with being blown in by the wind and then becalmed and therefore unable to get out again. Because he was doubtful of the wisdom of sailing in, he christened it “Doubtful Harbour”.

There was a group of smaller, rocky islands beside the rather larger Secretary Island which is the gatekeeper for the Sound.

The observant among you will have seen the brown flecks on the rocks in the photo above. These are members of a permanent fur seal colony which has this area as its main residence.

Lots of guests appreciated this variety in the surroundings and came to view the seals (which are sealions, of course, but you knew that, didn’t you?).

The scenery reverted back to the “cliffs and rainforest” sort as we headed back towards Deep Cove.

At one point we passed a “tree avalanche”. The trees are clinging on to steep rocks with the shallowest but widest of (therefore interlaced) roots. Occasionally, often weather-driven, the cling isn’t enough and one tree comes away, taking with it all the others on its way down.

We had a delicious comedy moment on the way back, too. The cruise featured the pretentious thing where the skipper turns all the engines off and those that wanted to could go outside and appreciate the beauty of the environment with just its natural soundtrack. The guide told us to make all our phones silent and asked that no-one clattered around the boat for the five minutes or so that this lasted. Almost everybody obeyed this, with only one or two idiots walking around to get more photos. Silence reigned. Well, it would have, except for one very young boy. He made quite a noise shouting for his mummy and telling her (and, thus everyone) that he’d fallen down. She managed to quiet him for a few seconds and silence reigned once again until he piped up once more in the loud voice that toddlers specialise in using at the wrong moment: “Mummy, why has the boat stopped?”

Back at the visitor centre at Deep Cove, we milled around for several more minutes, giving the sandflies another chance for a feed. Inside the centre were some information displays, including a couple of interesting ones concerning the power station: a 1-in-8 model of one of the seven turbines, used to ensure correct design;

and a cutaway model showing the various tunnels through which the water flows to drive the turbines.

The turbines are in the yellow chamber (the tunnels to it are access tunnels); the water goes down from the lake, through the turbine and exits stage left above on its way to Deep Cove and Doubtful Sound. As we were to learn later, there’s quite a large amount of water management attached to this power station. It’s important to maintain the levels in Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, irrespective of wet or dry weather, and so there are dams and valves to divert or block flow in the associated Mararoa and Waiau rivers. All for a bit of aluminium; the hydro power doesn’t go to any other users, if I understand it correctly.

The journey back from Doubtful Sound was, unsurprisingly, the reverse of the way out with one exception; Josh, when driving us on the Manapouri – Te Anau leg, put in a small diversion by request of one of the passengers so that we could look at “two wee bookshops”. Whatever image that might have created in our minds, it wasn’t this.

They are the creation of Ruth Shaw, who started out selling books in her one “wee bookshop”; the business expanded and she now has two wee bookshops, and very charming they look, too. We hadn’t time to stop, but it was lovely to see this characterful, colourful, cultural oasis in Manapouri.

And so came to an end our short stay in Te Anau; we had the prospect of a leisurely progress further south the next day with – we hoped – an important date with more wildlife. Stay tuned to see how it worked out.

Scenic drive to Te Anau

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Monday 16 March 2026 – Our next stop was in Te Anau, which is at the southern end of Lake Te Anau, some 230km south-west of Wānaka and about a three-hour drive. Once again, we spent a great deal longer on the journey than the bare bones of the drive, as we had a couple of interesting towns and an encounter with flesh-eating and occasionally cannibalistic worms to fit into the journey. As well as that, we discovered as we went, there was a lot of scenery to ~~photograph~~ admire en route.

Our first stop was none of these things, though. As we were driving along, Jane said words which sounded to me like “pull in on the left here, there is a bra fence.” I couldn’t make sense of the second bit, but, because I know my place, I followed the basic instruction and pulled in on the left. And, behold!

There was a bra fence! Its history is rather chequered. It started because some wag put four bras on a fence, and, rather like the padlock bridges which one sees around the world, grew as people informally contributed to it and eventually was deemed an eyesore. It lost, erm, support from the local council who ordered it to be removed. Eventually it was set up at its current location, a private driveway belonging to Cardrona tour guide Kelly Spaans and her partner Sean Colbourne, and a donation facility added. It has currently raised over NZ$200,000 for breast cancer charities.

Having made a small donation to what seems like a good cause, we carried on, over the Crown Range Pass, about 40km south of Wānaka. There is a scenic lookout there, and with good reason. The view is simply staggering.

It even improves as you head down towards Queenstown,

with, at one point, a 270-degree panoramic view.

Queenstown, which is the lakeside town you can see in the first of the photos above, is very well-known as a place to visit. Less familiar to us was the name of the next place we visited, at the suggestion of Phil and Chris, our friends in Brisbane: Arrowtown. It’s a town with, we learned, a considerable history around gold mining and Chinese immigrants, so we drove in to take a look. The first challenge appeared to be to find a parking spot, but we followed a P sign which led to a full car park but one with an overflow area. We reached the furthest depths of the overflow area before we found a space, and I was worried that we would have a major hike into town until I looked to my left and saw a building whose picture I’d seen on Google Maps. It was actually this building

which is part of the Historic Arrowtown Chinese Settlement. So we had accidentally parked just a few yards away from a key part of the town we wanted to see!

So: Arrowtown, then. It’s a historic town, and the start of this history is marked.

In August 1862 Jack Tewa (known as Maori Jack) found gold in the Arrow River at this spot, and – who’d a thunk it? – very soon a town of 800 miners sprang up. The context of what follows is the Otago Gold Rush, which brought miners from all corners to this area of New Zealand in the 1860s. By 1865, the first flush was over and the provincial councils were worried about the local economy collapsing, so invited Chinese miners to come over and have a go. Altogether, some 8,000 miners came over and worked in the Otago area. In Arrowtown this was an inglorious episode where the Chinese were invited but not welcome; they were forced to live in huts beside Bush Creek, a tributary to the Arrow River, and endured considerable hostility from the local community. But the Chinese community in Arrowtown held together and developed while in others the Chinese, having made their money, moved away and any sites were abandoned. The site in Arrowtown is a partial restoration of the settlement, and “a mute reminder and tribute to the contribution made by Chinese goldminers and business people to the region’s gold mining, cultural and business history”.

There are several buildings to be seen on a short trail beside the creek. The building shown above, the one that caught my eye, is Al Lum’s Store, which stocked many of the European and imported goods that the Chinese miners needed. There are a few others, some dwellings and some used more for storage.

The main street in Arrowtown has many historic buildings still in use, and is a pleasant area to walk around. I wonder what the locals think about the large numbers of tourists who come to the town; one hopes they appreciate the income this represents.

Queenstown is basically next door to Arrowtown, but there’s still room for some scenery between the two.

It’s even more challenging to park in than Arrowtown. Caroline had recommended that we park at the Ice Arena and walk to the town through the gardens, so that’s what we did (but had to wait for someone to leave before we could park even there).

The gardens form an attractive area, with ponds and statuary

“Kuri”, by Richard Wells

“The Good Book” by Trevor Askin

and an area with some commemorative works in it

Bruce Grant, son of Queenstown, who ascended K2

Scott, Oates and the team who reached the South Pole but sadly didn’t make it back

From the gardens, you can go down to the waterfront and walk back to the town

above which one can see the Queenstown Gondola ascending. This is one of the many Things To Do in Queenstown, but we only had time for a quick coffee (OK, OK, and a scone, yes) before we had to move on. So we left Queenstown largely unexplored, but we needed to get to Te Anau in time for our date with those worms. The rest of the drive was quite scenic

without any particular Lookouts to look out for; and the scenery softened somewhat from the jaggedy mountains to a more rounded landscape.

The area is very pastoral, with lots of farming. At one point it appeared that neighbouring farms were competing in the number of hay “marshmallows” they could dot around their fields.

We had to get to Te Anau by 4.30pm in order to join a trip to some glowworm caves. We’d seen glowworms in the wild before, but were intrigued by the idea of an exploration into caves. The excursion is exclusively offered by RealNZ, which offers a number of excursions around the South Island (as we would see during the rest of our trip, actually). We checked in at their waterfront office in Te Anau and joined the happy throng

awaiting the boat which would take us to the caves.

It’s about half an hour’s cruise to Cavern House, where RealNZ have a visitor hut, which they use to brief people about the cave expedition. We kind of knew about the worms and the threads they dangle to ensnare insects attracted by the light they can emit, but we got a lot more detail via this briefing. Jane took photos of some of the pictures they showed us.

Glowworm threads

A glowworm exuding a thread

Among the nuggets we were told:

The largest insect they can deal with is a moth. Having ensnared it, they attack it through its eyes, the only way the worm can get at the moth’s good bits
The worm’s light comes from a mixture of three chemicals; it takes a worm around 45 minutes to kindle a light and about 10 minutes to extinguish it
They are territorial; one worm might knock a neighbour off its bit of cave roof if it encroaches
They are also cannibalistic; they might eat the other encroaching worm in order to maintain territory

We were also told that photography was forbidden; I knew this in advance, and so was emotionally prepared for this hardship.

The punters were then split into groups who each did something else whilst another group was looking at the worms. It’s a slick operation that RealNZ runs there, with 11 tours in a day and two to three dozen people in a tour. Since photography is forbidden, I can’t bring you my own photos, but there are some on the RealNZ site.

We had a short nature trek whilst the other group were in the caves, then we filed in (under a very low rock entrance) to the caves, which have been caused, of course, by rushing water. It’s still rushing, and in huge quantities – the name Te Anau comes from these caves, meaning the place of swirling waters – so at first things were very noisy as we followed a walkway past subterranean waterfalls and over rapids, with the glow of numbers of worms already visible. Eventually and in almost total darkness we clambered into a boat on a subterranean lake; this was manoeuvred by our guide pulling on a cable along a channel and into a chamber illuminated solely by the light of thousands, probably tens of thousands, of worms. It was quite the spectacle and the magic would have been ruined had people been trying to capture it on their phones, so the moratorium on photography makes complete sense.

We were glad that we’d made it to Te Anau in time for our cruise, which was a very good experience. The only suggestion I’d make is that they sell photos of the various parts of the trip – the waterfall and the rapids would make good images, and of course the worms themselves, difficult as it is to convey photographically. If they need a jobbing photographer to attempt these things, then they can contact me through this site…..

Only after this trip could we get to our accommodation in Te Anau, the comfortable and well-organised B&B called Dunluce. Te Anau was our base for one more activity, which I will tell you all about in the next entry.

An Aspiring Day

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Sunday 15 March 2026 – You can do all sorts of things from Wānaka – boat tours on the lake, rafting, helicopter flights, waterfall cable climbs, sky diving, paragliding. It seems such a nice town, yet everything seems to be geared towards getting you out of it. Anyway, another option is to find a trail and go walking. So, with a day on our hands, that’s what we decided to do. Obviously.

Caroline looked us over and said that we looked like the hiking types (appearances can be so deceptive), so why didn’t we try the Rob Roy Glacier trail? We took a look at it: 472m gain in 5km, according to AllTrails, is a little on the daunting side, but we decided we’d give it a go. It’s not local to Wānaka; it’s a 50km drive into the Mount Aspiring National Park, and some 30km of that is along a dirt road.

As we left Wānaka, the extent and scope of the A&P show was somewhat borne in on us, even though they were breaking down and clearing up.

Soon we could see the snow-capped mountains in the distance

and eventually hit the dirt road.

The scenery, as you’d expect from heading into the mountains, was dramatic

and so were the driving conditions, occasionally.

The sheep were loose, but there were also herds of deer behind fences, presumably being farmed. We got to the car park to find, to our total lack of surprise, that on a sunny Sunday, lots of other people had had the same idea as us.

We managed to find a space that didn’t seem too obstructive (later, we found that people had strewn cars all along the road, so we needn’t have worried about being tidy after all). A quick visit to the loo there and off we went,

past a rather handsome sculpture of a raptor of some description.

(It’s got a rather Simpsons-narrow-eyed expression, don’t you think?). The path starts off not completely level but at least “Inca flat” – ending at the same altitude it started – beside the Matukituki river

before one crosses the suspension bridge and the path starts to climb.

It’s largely through forest, which means that the bloody trees get in the way of the view

but occasionally they clear to give one a decent view.

Most of the trail is fine, if a little rocky, but there are some interesting moments as you climb.

and then you get to some steps – 126 of them in total.

These are relatively recent additions, to bypass damage that had rendered the trail impassable, so I suppose I’ll let them off. Shortly after the steps, you reach the Lower Lookout, where there are benches and an opportunity to rest and get some idea of what awaits those who carry on to the Upper Lookout.

From the signs and the AllTrails track profile, I was expecting this last kilometre to be rather tougher than what we’d already climbed, but basically it wasn’t. There were a couple of spots where the track became what Ian Burley would describe as “technical” and which I would call “bloody tricky and a bit nerve-racking”.

but we negotiated them without injury and carried on, past a couple of decent views

the end of the trail – unofficial caption: “Thank Christ for that!”. Apart from the sheer satisfaction of having grunted one’s way up there, it’s a great place to get to. For a start, you can sit down and have your lunch,

and read the various info boards about the history of the place, which completely fail to answer the one obvious question that must occur to everyone as they heave themselves up the trail: why the actual is it called the “Rob Roy Glacier Trail”? What has a Scottish outlaw from the 17th Century got to do with an ice field in New Zealand? The glacier is named after the mountain, Rob Roy Peak; the naming of the mountain is usually attributed to one Charlie Douglas, a late 19th-century explorer with strong Scottish connections. There seem to be many Scottish aspects to this region of New Zealand, and this is a classic example.

Anyway….the view is fantastic.

It’s of course very difficult to do justice to photographically; I also tried a bit of video from this lookout and a point slightly below it.

I hope you get the idea.

Having lunched, of course, we had to face the inevitability of getting back down again; down can be so much harder than up. Actually, it was OK, with a couple of decent views as we went,

but we were glad to see the suspension bridge and the car park again.

Unsurprisingly, there were far fewer vehicles there when we got back to our car.

According to my Garmin, the trail was 11km, and I expended 1300 calories in 16,000 steps. This makes it half a Tongariro, without the utter fucking brutality of That Descent, so we felt pretty good having completed today’s hike in just four and a half hours..

The journey back to our accommodation was as scenic as the journey out,

and we spent the rest of the evening resting.

This was our only full day in Wānaka – the morrow would see us moving on to parts new and even further south on our journey to the bottom of the South Island, via a couple of potentially interesting places – stay tuned to find out which.