Queenstown, Otago & Southland

Kāi Tahu, as the southern dialect names Ngāi Tahu, held the south after earlier peoples, Waitaha and Kāti Māmoe, and travelled inland to the lakes for food and along trails to the pounamu of the west. Sealers reached Foveaux Strait and Fiordland first, and whaling stations followed on the Otago and Southland coasts in the 1830s, where Kāi Tahu supplied the whalers and began to integrate with them.

In 1848 the Otago settlement was founded by the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland, and Dunedin, named from the Gaelic for Edinburgh, was laid out on Otago Harbour. Gold discovered at Gabriel's Gully in 1861 set off the Otago gold rush, and further strikes around Queenstown, the Shotover and Arrow rivers and the Clutha filled the interior with miners, including Chinese miners invited by the province. The wealth made Dunedin, for a time, the country's largest city, with the first university, founded in 1869, and grand stone buildings. In 1882 the ship Dunedin sailed from Port Chalmers with the first successful cargo of frozen meat for Britain, founding a trade that shaped the whole country.

The 20th century brought hydro-electric dams on the Clutha, which flooded Cromwell's old town, the Homer Tunnel to Milford Sound, opened in 1953, and the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter near Bluff. Queenstown's commercial bungy jumping, begun at the Kawarau Bridge in 1988, turned it into a world adventure resort.

Dunedin keeps its Scottish identity: a statue of Robert Burns in the Octagon, bagpipe bands, Presbyterian churches and stone buildings. It is also a student city, where the University of Otago's "scarfies" shape the nightlife, and the 1980s "Dunedin sound" of indie bands on the Flying Nun label gave it a place in music history. Rugby rivalry with Canterbury is keen.

Southland has a rural, farming culture and a regional accent, the Southland burr, with a rolled "r" linked to Scottish settlers. Invercargill celebrates Burt Munro, the motorcyclist of The World's Fastest Indian. Kāi Tahu culture is present in marae, place names and the dialect's "k", as in Kāi Tahu itself.

Queenstown and Wānaka have a transient, international culture of ski and adventure workers, and festivals celebrate winter and the outdoors, while Central Otago's small towns keep a gold-rush heritage and a culture of vineyards and cycling on rail trails.

Dunedin, with around 130,000 people, lives on its university, hospital and services; Invercargill has about 55,000 and serves Southland's farms. The Queenstown Lakes District has grown to more than 50,000 people, driven by tourism and lifestyle migration, and Wānaka has over 10,000.

Southland and South Otago are sheep and dairy country, with meat works, forestry and the Tiwai Point smelter. Central Otago grows grapes and stone fruit around Cromwell and Alexandra, and tourism dominates the lakes and Fiordland.

Queenstown's housing costs are among the country's highest, and low-paid workers struggle to find rooms, while its traffic and airport growth are local issues. Dunedin debates the rebuild of its hospital, and Southland the future of the smelter. Winter days are short in the far south, and the cold shapes daily routines.

Southland's most famous delicacy is the Bluff oyster, harvested from Foveaux Strait in autumn and winter and celebrated at an annual festival in Bluff. The region's everyday speciality is the cheese roll, a slice of bread spread with a cheese sauce, rolled and toasted, sometimes called "southern sushi".

Central Otago is the world's southernmost commercial wine region, known for pinot noir, from Gibbston, Bannockburn and around Cromwell, where orchards also grow cherries and apricots. Dunedin's Speight's brewery has made beer since the 19th century.

The region's lamb, venison and salmon appear on restaurant menus, and Stewart Island's mutton birds, the tītī, are local specialities.

Queenstown sits on Lake Wakatipu beneath The Remarkables, with the Skyline gondola, the TSS Earnslaw steamship, jet boats on the Shotover River and the bungy at the Kawarau Bridge. Arrowtown preserves its gold-rush main street and Chinese settlement, and Glenorchy lies at the head of the lake. Wānaka has Roys Peak, the lakeside willow known as That Wānaka Tree, and access to Mount Aspiring National Park.

Fiordland is the largest national park in the country, part of the Te Wāhipounamu UNESCO World Heritage Site. Milford Sound, with Mitre Peak, is reached by road from Te Anau through the Homer Tunnel or on the Milford Track; Doubtful Sound and the Kepler and Routeburn tracks lie nearby.

Dunedin has its railway station, Baldwin Street, one of the world's steepest streets, and Larnach Castle, while the Otago Peninsula holds the albatross colony at Taiaroa Head, yellow-eyed penguins and sea lions. The Catlins run south from Nugget Point past Purakaunui Falls to Curio Bay's petrified forest. Ōamaru, the Moeraki Boulders and the Otago Central Rail Trail lie to the north. Stewart Island / Rakiura, reached from Bluff, has Rakiura National Park, Ulva Island's bird sanctuary and kiwi in the wild.