Wānaka

Kāi Tahu travelled to the lakes on seasonal journeys, camping at the outlet of Lake Wānaka and moving inland for eels, weka and other food and along trails towards the pounamu of the west coast. The name is the South Island dialect form of wānanga, meaning sacred knowledge or a place of learning; an early settler derivation from Oanaka is disputed by Ngāi Tahu, and the macron was restored to the spelling in recent years. European runholders took up the dry country around the lake from the late 1850s, and the Otago gold rush of the 1860s brought miners to the Cardrona Valley and the Clutha River, leaving hotels, stone cottages and water races behind.

For most of its first century the settlement, long called Pembroke, was a small service centre for sheep stations and a summer camping spot for Otago families. Boats carried timber and goods on the lake, roads were slow and the Haast Pass route north was not fully open to vehicles until the 1960s. The town dropped the name Pembroke in 1940 and its lakefront filled with baches, holiday houses and a camping ground on the reserve.

Skiing and climbing changed it. Mount Aspiring National Park was created in 1964 around the peak the surveyors called Aspiring and Kāi Tahu know as Tititea, drawing mountaineers to the Matukituki, and commercial ski fields opened in the Cardrona Valley and at Treble Cone in the 1970s and 1980s, giving the town a winter season. The airshow at the airport, first held in the late 1980s, and the tourism boom that followed Queenstown's brought steady growth, and since the 1990s Wānaka has been one of the fastest-growing towns in New Zealand, with new subdivisions spreading east over the flats.

Wānaka's identity is built on the outdoors and on not being Queenstown. There is no bungy operator in the middle of town and the nightlife is modest; instead the town is full of people who came for a season of skiing or climbing and stayed, of families who moved from the cities for the lake, and of visitors who walk, cycle, swim and ski. Mountaineering has deep roots here, with the Matukituki huts and Mount Aspiring as a training ground for generations of climbers, and the local search and rescue teams are a point of community pride.

The cultural calendar is small but distinct: a biennial airshow that brings historic aircraft and large crowds to a town of this size, a biennial arts festival, the agricultural and pastoral show held since 1934, and a long-standing cinema known for its sofas and home baking. Central Otago's gold-rush heritage survives in the Cardrona Valley, where an 1860s hotel and a few cottages are all that remain of a mining settlement.

Residents are protective of the lakefront and the views, and the growth of the town is the standing argument — over subdivisions, traffic, freedom camping and the number of visitors on tracks such as Roys Peak. Conservation groups run predator trapping and native planting around the lakes. The etiquette expected of visitors is simple and firmly held: stay on the tracks, pick up after dogs, take rubbish out, and do not park on the grass.

Wānaka's urban area has grown to about 13,000 residents, and with Albert Town, Lake Hāwea and the surrounding countryside the Upper Clutha holds several thousand more. Growth has been rapid for three decades, and the built-up area now runs well east of the old centre into new subdivisions with their own schools and shops. Visitor numbers in peak weeks and the share of houses used as holiday homes make the resident population feel smaller than it is.

The economy is tourism, construction and services, with farming on the terraces and vineyards and orchards towards Cromwell. The ski fields, activity operators, hotels, cafés and the airport employ a large share of the workforce, and building has been a constant industry as the town expands. Many households combine seasonal work with something else, and a significant number of residents work remotely or commute to Queenstown.

Housing cost is the dominant local issue: prices and rents are among the highest in the country relative to local wages, and seasonal staff struggle to find rooms. Traffic on the two roads into town, pressure on the lakefront and water quality in the lakes are debated alongside it. Everyday life is outdoors — school sport, swimming off the jetty in summer, skiing after work in winter, running and cycling on the tracks — with hospital care and larger shopping a drive to Queenstown, Cromwell or Dunedin.

Wānaka eats well for its size, on Central Otago produce and with a strong café culture. The region's stone fruit is the great local ingredient: cherries, apricots, peaches and nectarines from the Cromwell basin, sold from roadside stalls through the summer and turned into tarts, ice cream and jam. Lamb and merino from the high-country stations, farmed red deer venison, salmon from the Mackenzie canals and Central Otago vegetables fill the restaurant menus, and Bluff oysters and blue cod come up from the south in season.

Everyday food is New Zealand casual — bakery pies, fish and chips, burgers, brunches of eggs and sourdough, and flat whites taken seriously. A few restaurants on and behind Ardmore Street work at a higher level, and there are Thai, Japanese and Italian kitchens, pizza places and brewpubs. Mountain food matters too: the bakeries and supermarkets are where walkers and climbers stock up before the Matukituki valleys and the huts.

Drink is Central Otago's strength. The district is part of the world's southernmost commercial wine region, and vineyards on the lake terraces around Wānaka and in the Cromwell basin make pinot noir, riesling, pinot gris and sparkling wine; several cellar doors are a short drive from the town. Craft breweries operate in and near the town, cider is pressed from Central Otago orchards, and a distillery or two produce gin and whisky. Mulled wine and hot chocolate belong to the ski season.