Daily Photo – Lake Hayes Junction, Lake Hayes

At Lake Hayes, I had pulled over to escape the steady stream of traffic heading to and from Frankton and Queenstown in one direction, and the Gibbston Valley, Kawarau Gorge, and Cromwell in the other. The water was still, a smooth, glassy surface reflecting the peaks of the surrounding mountains, indifferent to the human chaos behind me. Yet even here, it was impossible to ignore the changes to the Queenstown-Lakes District.

In my day Frankton was a separate settlement from Queenstown, on the drive you’d pass through Frankton, a motel famously made out of bottles, trees, mountains and views of the lake. Eventually, you’d spot the Skyline Gondola high on the mountain side, then Queenstown itself. Nowadays, Frankton is a suburb of Queenstown, with the drive being a slow procession of cars, boats, trailers, trucks and campervans passing an endless stream of motels, hotels, houses and lifestyle blocks where majestic views of the lake used to be. When people buy property or develop land, I don’t think the environment comes into it very much. The focus seems to be on capitalising on the property boom and gaining resource consent than maintaining the natural environment. When a study into population growth in the area was carried out it found that between 2013 and 2018, the population jumped from 28,224 to 39,153 – a startling 39% increase. It was then carried out again in 2024 where it had climbed again to 52,400. That’s a staggering population increase of nearly 25,000. I would scarcely have believed these figures, I had not seen the ongoing development for myself. Driving from Frankton to Lake Hayes, the road passed new subdivisions, rooftops, and roads that seemed to sprout suddenly from nowhere. How do people look at all this development and still see the charm that made people fall in love with the place? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it’s a mix of necessity and ambition – more people, more houses, more infrastructure, more money to be made. For all I know, developers are trying their best, but it often feels like all the development is spoiling the very scenery people are coming to see. 

What I can tell you is that having driven through the area, you spend more time looking at the scenery than being in it. Yet, amid the chaos, the landscape remains a spectacular draw for people around the world. If only they left footprints, not foundations.