Michael Tyler

Another place which is worth a visit, is the Kiwi Bird Sactuary.

This has live Kiwi’s to watch in their natural habitat.

It has some interesting bits of natural wild-birdlife up-close, including walk-in aviaries, allowing the birds to grab hold of any attractive sundries you may have about your person.
Doesn’t happen often, but there is an amusing story about a missing lens cover on the audio-guide supplied when you walk in.

Visit @ 11am or 3pm to take advantage of the live Maouri show.

Here’s a few pictures.

Walk in Aviary, Kiwi Birdlife Park, Queenstown

Some ducks hanging out.
Kiwi Birdlife Park, Queenstown, New Zealand

Maouri Hut, Kiwi Birdlife Park, New Zealand

A Maouri house before settlers arrived.

A whole Maouri family whould fit in one of these.
They used to sleep close to the floor so as to overwhelm attackers when they stooped down spearing them in the face.

The first commercial Bungy site.

Copying from drug crazed egalitarian tribes down in South America somewhere, AJ and his friend from Holland had an idea that this might be a good thing to do.
Working together with scientists from the local university, they developed a formula to make the first Bungy rope.

This was to string people from a local bridge.

Mad
Initially as the blurb will tell you no-one was interested in this ridiculous and frightening sport. And in the first year they only managed to find 28 people mad enough to do it.

Sales
Hackett developed the ‘Bungy Code of Practice’ to qualify and quantify this mad new pursuit.

Slowly, more and more normal punters came in, Hackett become the Bill Gates of Bungy and Bungy became the multimillion pound sport it is today.

Kawarau Bridge, Bungy, New Zealand

I did all this Bungy bollocks in Australia a few years back.
If you haven’t done it, you need to do it. If you have, don’t feel you need to do it again (unless your friends are watching, which mine aren’t 😉 ).

Weblinks: AJ Hackett

For those unfamiliar with New Zealand, Queenstown is like the adrenaline activity hotspot for New Zealand.

For Australia, it might be Cairns.
For Chile, it’s Pucon.
For Argentina, Bariloche.
For New Zealand, it’s Queenstown.

A little history
AJ Hackett first came up with the idea of Bungy jumping here things have been on the up and up since.

Rafting, fishing, heli-biking pretty much any activity you can think of goes off here.

Although there is too much to go into detail in this blog. The main ones you can find of interest and originality to Queenstown are:-

Jetboating
As well as the standard adrenaline junky fare, Queenstown lays claim to being the originator of some unique Kiwi technology.

I order to navigate the rivers, often empty and full of stones, a clever Kiwi had the idea of removing the propeller and replacing it with an internal jet engine.
That way they could travel the length of the rivers even when the water levels were low without smashing up the power prop.

The Kiwi’s love this and have turned into a tourist industry. Jet boating.

Bungy Jumping
As the town where Bungy first reared its bobbing head, the town has a number of sites scattered around it’s peripheries.
The main ones are Nevis, the swing and Karawau, the original.

Routeburn Trial
Probably the most famous walking route in New Zealand originates in the peripheries of the town.
Anyone serious about hiking, or with a couple of weeks in the itinerary should consider this trial as a once in a lifetime experience.
Bring your tent.

Weblinks: Jetboating – Shotover
Weblinks: Bungy – AJ Hackett
Weblinks: Routeburn – Routeburn