Queenstown: Adventure Capital

From Illustrated Guide to New Zealand

This once sleepy lakeside town in Central Otago has transformed itself into a mecca for adventurers and thrill-seekers from all over the world.

Queenstown proclaims itself the adventure tourism capital of New Zealand and even in the intensely competitive travel industry few would argue the point. In fact, with that air of confidence that comes naturally to a place that trades on daily shaves with danger, Queenstown reckons it’s the best place in the world for serious adrenaline junkies.

That’s a hard claim to verify. But, say those in the adventure tourism business, where else in the world is there such a concentration of hair-raising activities of such diversity and seasonal variety? Bungy jumping, parapenting, jet-boat rides, luge, river surfing, rafting, skydiving and hang-gliding all exploit Queenstown’s unique combination of landforms, climate and innovative local entrepreneurs.

These activities, along with Queenstown’s myriad of other more conventional attractions, such as skiing, tramping, lake cruises, wineries, golf and fishing, draw more than a million visitors a year.

No one’s quite sure what proportion of these visitors overall try a little life on the wild side, but it’s estimated that at least sixty per cent of the usually younger backpacker market does. And while it might be New Zealanders thinking up the next daredevil adventure activity, about eighty per cent of their customers are overseas tourists.

Leading the Way
Go back in time to the 1960s and Queenstown was a very different place: a typical low-key New Zealand holiday destination, albeit set in spectacular alpine scenery. Change arrived in the perhaps unlikely form of a Christian youth camp fundraiser.

In 1960, two Invercargill brothers, Alan and Harold Melhop (who had earlier made the first powered navigation of the Kawarau Falls dam in a jet boat), decided that public interest in their boats be harnessed to help swell the camp coffers. They began offering trips on the Kawarau River (at five shillings a ride), and these were such a success that they decided to go into business.

So the world’s first commercial jet-boating operation began, and it continues today as the Kawarau Jet. By 1964, the Melhops had also launched the Shotover Jet service, cementing Queenstown’s place as the birth of jet boating as a tourist attraction.

The Melhops’ success inspired other Kiwi adventurers. In the 1970s, Jim Archibald and Dale Gardiner set up their Danes Back Country company to offer trips on rafts. At first the trips were sedate ‘floats’ downstream, but by 1974 Danes was offering the first whitewater rafting trips in Australasia.

The adrenaline was building up nicely, but the real rush began with the advent of the world’s first commercial bungy jumping venture on the Kawarau Bridge, near Queenstown in 1988. Speed skiers A.J. Hackett and Henry van Asch had been inspired by the ‘land divers’ of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu (where for generations, men have leapt off platforms with vines attached to their ankles to celebrate the yam harvest) and by members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club (who in 1979 made the first modern bungy jump from the Clifton Suspension Bridge).

Hackett and van Asch began experimenting with extreme jumps using latex-rubber cords. After creating an international media furore with a bungy leap from the Eiffel Tower, they were given permission for a thirty-day bungy jump operation from the Kawarau Bridge. That first year, over seventy people took the plunge; today, about three hundred and fifty thousand visitors stop here annually – about ten per cent to jump, the rest to watch.

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