We imagine the first people drawn here

(2025)

The road to Glenorchy must be one of the loveliest roads in the world. It sings to me still, the orchestra of mountains, the festival of beauty, the baton of the blue of Lake Wakatipu bringing it altogether in that littoral space between mountain and shore edge. The eyes delight in the fine-tuned wonder of it all. Had there been eye-witnesses at its conception, they would have said you can't do it. The not-possible of the nay-sayers. Now, the rumble of the volcanoes, an aria of wilderness.

We imagine the first people who were drawn here, waka seated in the magic of virgin ecstasy, the magnetic pull of hoe, and the mystery, the unexpected. Their first sightings of Matau and Wawahi. We talked excitedly of the road-builders whose skills and blood and sweat created the way into paradise. Hard won, the toil etched in human engineering. 

Glenorchy is the capital of quiet, nicely chilled. The Scots who came here, remote Argyll with Orchy running through it, now only a memory in dust and bones. In November the streets are empty of Duracell bunnied cameras of wide-eyed humans finding it difficult to sit still with all that beauty to deal with. Look, we too have been overwhelmed.

To experience such grandness you have to go there, photographs and glossy guides a mere half way point: to feel insignificant on corkscrew bends, to allow your eyes to stretch skyward, entranced by the snow-capped peaked Humboldt Mountains and, at every new turning, something where there are simply not enough superlatives in the world to say how we feel.

The road to Glenorchy

We witnesed the sight of a tourist who simply stoppped in the road in the pursuit of the perfect photograph. He clearly couldn't wait to pull off into the countless numbers of widened verges to look out safely.