Arrowtown, Chinese Settlement Walk, New Zealand - December 2014

While I was resting in Queenstown for a couple of days last year, whilst waiting for Sam to arrive, I reluctantly tore myself away from the coffee shops for an afternoon and headed out to Arrowtown to check it out. Arrowtown is an old mining village just over 20 kilometres from Queenstown, the small village has a population of around 2400 people and next to quaint in the dictionary there is  a picture of Arrowtown. Arrowtown sprung up in the 1860's when gold was found in the Arrow River, luckily a lot of old historical buildings have survived the years and have been tastefully restored. 

The Chinese Settlement Walk.

Parking down near the park at the north side of town I firstly wandered over to the historic Chinese Settlement Walk. Arrowtown had a lot of Chinese prospectors back in the day, and like in Australia their treatment in New Zealand was sometimes very bad, the Chinese miners weren't even allowed their own claims and were left to rework old claims a lot of the time. The old settlement at Arrowtown is a good example of how the Chinese lived and worked in ye olde days. 

The old miners huts looked like they'd be good for hobbits.

Following the Swamp Gully Track along the banks of Bush Creek I passed numerous restored old mining shacks, some cut into the sides of the mountain. One of the interesting things about these old building is how low the roof and door height is, some of the doors were only chest height on me, those Chinese blokes must have been pretty short. Now while they may have been short at the same time they must have been tough, as it would have been a hard, cold and wet place to work and live. After less than half a kilometre (hey I didn't say that this was a long walk!) I picked up a track that linked up to Manse Road.

Once out of the gully I followed the quiet Manse Road for a few hundred metre away from town, there are some nice galleries out here and from the look of it today it seems that they are far enough from the centre of town that most of the day trippers don't get out here as I was the only person checking the works out. After checking out a couple of the private galleries I wandered back towards town along the quiet road climbing up to the old cemetery on the way to check out the well loved headstones and graves. These old cemeteries are great places to stop for awhile and take everything in, with a little imagination and with the information on the headstones its easy to imagine a little of what life was like out here a century or two ago.

There are a couple of private art galleries out of town a bit on Manse Road, this one featured a nice garden as well.

Arrowtown Cemetery.

Climbing above the cemetery I visited the small war memorial overlooking the main part of town, its old guns standing like sentinels over the town. My thoughts now turned to coffee, it had been at least two hours since my last caffeine hit so I was obviously doing it hard. Making my way down to the main street in Arrowtown, Buckingham Street I crossed over another little trail, the Te Araroa Trail, now that's a little stroll that'll will have to wait until I retire I reckon, but gee it looks good. The main street was a hive of activity this afternoon and after grabbing a coffee I wandered around for an hour or so checking out the galleries and shops, if history or shopping was your thing you could easily spend a day exploring Arrowtown and still be left with something to see I think. Today however I was running out of time, so with a little reluctance I jumped back in the car and headed back to Queenstown, I'll definitely be back in Arrowtown again one day to spend some more time checking it out, next time hopefully with Sam.

One of the old guns that stand like sentinels over looking down town Arrowtown.

Another one for my bucket list.

Arrowtown is impossibly quaint.

The Dirt.

I didn't really use any notes on this walk, the Chinese Settlement Walk has a paragraph in Excellent Short Walks In The South Island by Peter Janssen and the DOC brochure Wakatipu Walks also has a very short description in it. All you really need to do here is to head to the visitor information centre and grab a tourist map of Arrowtown and then explore where ever takes your interest, you're not going to get lost in Arrowtown.

The main street is home to some great shops, galleries and cafes, I'll have to come back one day with Sam.