Arrowtown Chinese Settlement
Image: Neville Ritchie | DOC
Introduction
One golden village, two tales. The picturesque preservation of two very different goldrush communities – Chinese and European – in a town that still thrives.Highlights
A visit to this thriving picture-postcard tourist town enables visitors to view both sides of the gold-rush coin: the preserved avenue where wealthy banks and merchants traded in the mid-1800s, and the restored huts on the edge of town that reveal the more modest lifestyles of the Chinese miners.
Landmarks/Whenua Tohunga are places that have shaped our nation and created our stories. History comes to life at these significant Landmarks.
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Image gallery
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Arrowtown Chinese Settlement
Arrowtown Chinese Settlement
...Image: Florian Bugiel | Creative Commons
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Arrowtown Chinese Settlement
Arrowtown Chinese Settlement
...Image: Photos_by_Angela | Creative Commons
Track overview
Dog access
About this track
Description
Arrowtown’s tree-lined main street provides calendar images of autumn-gold colour that go around the world. In the middle of the 19th century the gold was the real thing, and everyone was rushing to find it. The cottages and buildings in the historic Buckingham Street precinct represent the original core of economic activity within the town.
Chinese gold-miners also flocked to this area and in 1874 there were 3,564 Chinese living in Otago. In Arrowtown, the Chinese were forced to live in huts along isolated gullies on the banks of Bush Creek at the edge of town. Many of the huts have been restored, offering visitors the chance to step back into that ‘golden’ era and see up-close the toil and modest living conditions of the ‘other half’ in this prosperous town.
Take a short walk around this partially restored and well interpreted Chinese settlement from the 1880s - kids will be fascinated with the old huts and what life was like.
Getting there
Arrowtown Chinese Settlement is off Buckingham Street in Arrowtown.
Contacts
| Whakatipu-wai-Māori / Queenstown Visitor Centre | |
| Phone: | +64 3 442 7935 |
| Fax: | +64 4 471 1117 |
| Email: | queenstownvc@doc.govt.nz |
| Address: |
50 Stanley Street Queenstown 9300 |
| Postal Address: |
PO Box 811 Queenstown 9348 |
| Full office details | |
