New Zealand: Queenstown, Mount Cook, and the Long Road to Milford Sound

Somewhere in my teens, I came across a coffee table book on the most beautiful places on earth, and Milford Sound featured in it. I was fascinated by the photographs — the water serene, the mountains majestic in scale. That image stayed with me, filed away for years in some subconscious bucket list.

Travel to New Zealand was a distant dream then, but it moved closer once we relocated to Sydney in 2021. New Zealand was suddenly a few hours away, and Milford Sound was beckoning. We made a short trip to Queenstown in 2023, but bad weather kept us from getting there.

In 2025 we tried again, this time planning a longer stay in Queenstown with Milford Sound built into the itinerary from the start. As we descended into Queenstown, there was once again a sense of anticipation — the Remarkables rising jagged on one side of the plane as we came in to land. The February sun was out in full, and the drive from the airport into town did its usual trick: Lake Wakatipu on the left, houses scattered up the hillside on both sides of the water, and for a moment it felt less like New Zealand and more like a lakeside town somewhere in the Alps.

Days by the Lake

The pace slows in Queenstown. Our first days there were spent doing very little — walking along the lakefront, buying ice cream, sitting on a bench with the Remarkables for company, occasionally extending the walk further than planned simply because the path kept looking better ahead.

It is in the evening that the town changes character. The restaurant lights along the shore begin to reflect on the water, and standing on the pier, we watched the day's lake cruises return one by one — the Earnslaw among them, the old steamship that still works this route, strung with fairy lights along its mast.

A short drive took us to Wanaka, where the best-known resident is a single tree standing in the middle of the lake. When we went, the water had retreated, and the tree almost stood on the shoreline — the mid-morning light and wisps of cloud drifting past made the scene surreal.

Arrowtown, further on, built into the hills, is made for a slow amble. The correct way to spend an afternoon there is on a bench under a leafy tree, coffee or ice cream in hand, watching life go by.

 Glenorchy and the Road That Gets There

The road to Glenorchy is one of those drives where the destination competes with the journey for your attention. Snow-covered peaks appeared and disappeared as the road curved, until we reached Bennetts Bluff, where the view was clearly too good to drive past. A short climb up the hillock brought us to a wide panorama — the lake below, hills on either side, snow on the distant peaks, and clouds doing dramatic things with the light as the sun moved in and out. It was hard to get back into the car afterward, and we did so reluctantly.

Glenorchy is a small hamlet where the pebbled beach along the lake gives you a sense of calm. We spent an afternoon there in no particular hurry to leave, the stillness and beauty of the place enveloping us.

Sunset Over the Remarkables

Back in Queenstown, we rode the cable car up to catch the sun setting on the Remarkables. With the sun going down on the opposite side, the Remarkables were slowly enveloped in shadow until only the tips stayed lit in a pink glow — and then everything changed color at once, as if a veil had been drawn over the landscape.

Coming back down, the town had shifted into twilight — the lake carrying reflections of the fading light, the sky holding onto an afterglow behind wisps of cloud.

The Road to Mount Cook

The next stretch was mostly driving towards Mount Cook, but driving through spectacular landscape. As we descended into the Lindis Pass, it looked at first like dried-out earth — until we realised the colour was the vegetation itself, a golden brown that gave the whole pass a look unlike anything we had driven through before. We made a mental note of the stops we wanted to linger at on our way back.

Coming down the other side, Mount Cook appeared ahead for the first time, with Lake Pukaki running alongside the road in a shade of emerald that seemed almost artificial. We stopped at Peter's Lookout, where the lake, the mountain, and the winding road all arranged themselves into a single frame in my viewfinder.

The Hermitage and the Tasman Glacier

The Hermitage sits at the heart of Mount Cook National Park, close enough that the mountain is visible from the reception desk, and closer still from our own balcony, which looked straight down the valley toward it.

After a quick meal, we set out for the Tasman Glacier — a drive, a kilometre on foot, then a boat onto the glacial river. The water was scattered with pieces from the glacier, close enough in places to reach out and touch. The guide steered us close to the glacier itself, and we could see nature's work up close and be awed by it.

Walking back later, it was late afternoon, and the valley floor had already dropped into shadow, while the peaks above still showed bright tips against a clear blue sky. The contrast was mesmerising, and together with the stillness of the valley, the walk back felt surreal.

The next morning, the view from the balcony had its own quiet drama — clouds sitting mid-mountain, the valley below, Mount Cook rising behind. Another moment of great beauty — New Zealand is a bounty that keeps overflowing.

On the drive back to Queenstown, we stopped at Lindis Pass again, where the valley opens out and the road can be seen winding through it below — a view that seemed to ask for one more look before we left it behind.

Milford Sound, At Last

The following day was the one we had been waiting years for.

There was to be drama again — a morning call to the tour company brought frustration: the flight was off again, rain having closed the route, though a later flight that same day remained possible. With our flight back to Sydney booked for the next morning, there was no more room to wait it out.

We spent the morning in the hotel room, unsure which way the day would go. The weather that grounded us that morning turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. By the time we finally boarded the small plane and climbed toward Milford Sound, the clouds had begun to clear. We landed on a narrow airstrip walled in by mountains, and stepped out into spectacular scenery — the picture from the cover of the coffee table book, right there in front of us in all its magnificence.

The rain that had kept us on the ground all morning had left the hillsides threaded with waterfalls, streaming down every fold of rock along the Sound. The boat ride from the airstrip out to the open sea followed the coastline past a multitude of these waterfalls, more than I could have imagined fitting into one stretch of water. The late afternoon light gave it one more layer — patches of sunlight picking out small sections of the landscape while the larger mountains stayed looming in shadow.

Going Home-Reluctantly

As we flew back to Queenstown, we felt a familiar emotion, one we'd had in every place we visited — reluctance to leave. The images from Milford Sound were still flashing in the mind's eye as we fell asleep.

I am writing this almost a year later, and Milford Sound still surfaces unannounced — a flash of waterfall, or that narrow airstrip between mountains. I remember, too, the last few minutes in Queenstown, dropping the car off at the airport in the early dawn, the Remarkables catching the first light one final time before we turned toward the terminal. It felt less like an ending than a postponement — a piece of land tucked into the corner of the world, waiting to be visited again.

Snow on stone, mist on glass,
Waterfalls waking as storm clouds pass,
Years of waiting to arrive

And a photograph comes alive.