Before Queenstown Gardens, this peninsula was a sheep run. In 1860, William Gilbert Rees and his wife Frances brought their family up Lake Wakatipu by whaleboat and built a homestead here, with tussock and grazing flocks running down to the water.

Then the gold rush made the town chaotic. Yet in 1866 and 1867 the Borough Council set the whole peninsula aside as a public reserve. The first trees were two English oaks, planted one winter by the mayor and a local nurseryman. Some of the giant oaks and Douglas firs towering over the paths today were put in by early settlers more than 150 years ago.

VoiceMap’s tours walk you from the Rees memorial to the pond and the band rotunda, then on to a boulder honouring Robert Falcon Scott, who never set foot in Queenstown.