Where to Hang in Queenstown, According to the Locals

This article is supported by Vodafone. On August 10-11 Vodafone are putting on the Wild Winter Weekender in Queenstown with Aussie electronic duo Peking Duk. You could join Peking Duk in some extreme Queenstown activities, before seeing them perform live over two huge nights. Win tickets, just get in the draw by July 13. Eligibility criteria and terms apply.

For a small Central Otago town of less than 20,000 year-round residents, Queenstown has really outdone itself in the tourist department as the go-to New Zealand holiday destination for backpackers, royals, celebrities, billionaires and normal waged individuals alike. Not surprising really, considering the how saturated in beauty the entire area is—with some of the most remarkable-looking ski mountains in the world (one range is literally called "The Remarkables") and beautiful lake views from almost any point in town.

With so much foot traffic, Queenstown has developed a few, well-known tourist institutions—taking a spot in the 40-minute Fergburger line; or buying that photo they took of you sitting on the gondola which was then framed in a gondola picture frame, which also flips open to reveal some fun-filled gondola factoids. Which are fine, I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing, but we figured you’d prefer a less cookie cutter version of Queenstown, which is why we’ve appointed ourselves as official funnelers of local Queenstown wisdom for the things to do, eat, drink and see that aren’t found through any typical ‘Top Things to Do in Queenstown’ Google search. Take the advice or leave it, but please, for the love of whichever deity you associate with (or don’t), don’t still come back from Queenstown with another one of those bloody gondola portraits after reading this. (I take it back about it being fine if you wanted to buy one of those. It’s not.)

After a day’s work at Queenstown’s delightful yet experimental, café-bar Yonder, Chantelle usually stops in for ‘a couple of drinks, a couple of wines’ at Sundeck, which “do really good cocktails and have a great wine selection” and usually have live DJs on the weekend “so it’s always a really good vibe”. Sundeck’s standout is the espresso martini. Arrowtown also has a “nice vibe” over winter “when all the trees change colour, and they’ve got some cool, little quirky cafes and restaurants there—like Chop Shop and The Fork and Tap, which does really good pub grub”.

The stalwart local activity is Friday night skiing followed by pool and beer. “A lot of the locals go up for a ski at Coronet Peak on a Friday night, have a few beers and then when they come back down go to Harry’s, play some pool, have some pizza. That’s quite a locals thing to do.” The pool bar earnt its status for “doing just really good housemade pizzas and locals-priced beers—like $5 or $6 a pint”. To cap off the night, Bunker is her go-to. “They just always have really good tunes on, they’ve got a great bar as well—a really good range of cocktails, wines and house spirits and they usually have some pretty good DJs on over the weekends.”

After spending most of his working hours tramping around greater Queenstown for commercial and wedding work, James likes to unwind by tramping around greater Queenstown. His absolute favourite is an old miner’s track near town that leads up to some giant hidden waterfalls. “The Mount Crichton Loop Track which goes up to the Sam Summers hut is stunning… The Sam Summers walk has got some cool heritage sites to look at—so there’s an old mining hut up there that’s being kept in its original state and you can actually stay there overnight if you want to—build a little fire in there. There’s a lot of remnants of the old mining days nearby, like old tunnels that have been chipped out of the cliffs there.” Near there, “there’s a little secret spot—if you can find it, it’s very difficult to find if you don’t know where it is—but it’s a little tunnel basically that you walk through and it takes you to some pretty spectacular waterfalls coming down from the canyon. It’s pretty cold though, so only really worth swimming in during the summer.” The way to find the waterfalls is by taking the last right turn at the fork in the road just before the Sam Summers hut. From there you have to squeeze through a narrow crevasse that miners had actually chipped out of rock, which will then get you to a stream, which you need to follow upstream to get to the waterfalls and pools.

Outside of his time spent hurtling down the backcountry sections of Queenstown’s nearby mountains, Finn usually loiters around Attiqa rooftop bar as well as Harry’s, the pool bar—especially on Fridays after night skiing. “A couple of good things happen at Harry’s. Harry’s is pretty cool, there’s people from everywhere, you’re always meeting someone from somewhere else.”

When the mountain closes up for the season, Finn moves lakeside. “There’s lots of things to do over summer too—we’d go boating, we’d go to the Big Swing at Lake Hayes Estate. It’s been there for years. One of my close friend’s granddad was actually the first person who put it there.” The swing platform is about 10 metres up a tree and the swing itself takes you about 30 metres out into the lake. “It’s just this massive swing and you swing out and you just get this huge amount of height and you can just practice tricks and stuff off it and into the water. I used to work at SITE trampoline, it was my first ever job. It was awesome to practice stuff on the tramp and then throw it into the water. It kind of hurts sometimes, water’s always super painful if you don’t do a rotation properly.”

Advertising brain Kelly is a mutt local who divides his time between wading through traffic in Auckland and carving powder in Queenstown. One of his go-tos is the Sherwood, run by a close friend of his. “My kind of vibe down there is if you want to avoid the cheesy tourist trap there’s some really cool stuff around the fringes like for instance the Sherwood, which is really cool for gigs and for dinner. You can just pull up a bar stool and hang out there, or maybe stand by one of their open fires and just talk shit with complete randoms and go to bed smelling like smoke, which we do quite a lot. It’s also nice to get away from the under-25 party puppies down in town.” Another is Blue Door in Arrowtown “where you can just get fucking weird. I’ve had many staggering, strolling down the street nights at Blue Door. Definitely go there, but watch your head. Every fucking time I go I hit my head on the door. I should know by now but every time I just get too excited and hit my head.”
For an apres-apres ski bar, Kelly reckons you can't go wrong with The Bunker. “[Around 4am] we usually end up at someone’s house, but if not The Bunker’s probably the only place we find ourselves going that late at night. They do really nice cocktails. It’s a bit sneaky, you know and it generally doesn’t have the party puppies there, you’re more likely to get into some cool conversation with someone so it’s more dynamic in that respect.”

Tiarn started as a skateboarder before transitioning into professional snowboarding, but is still a regular at the local parks. “Some days after riding I’d go skating—there’s mini ramps everywhere and also skate parks.” His pick is “definitely Queenstown Skatepark, that’s the local one, it’s right in town, it’s a big plaza, a lot of fun. It’s right by the Queenstown gardens too which are super pretty—and that’s kind of the hangout spot, everyone’s always there.”

The other good skating spot is just out of town by Lake Hayes. “There’s a pump track with a bunch of rolls and burns and stuff to carve around in by Lake Hayes Estate, the residential area. There’s a couple of mini ramps around too, like at the trampolining centre, SITE.” He goes trampolining quite often too. “Skateboarding, snowboarding and trampolining all just kind of go together for us. Obviously we love skateboarding and snowboarding, but trampolining’s pretty fun and it really helps us so we do that a bunch as well. SITE is cool because they’ve got all these trampolines over there that are super powerful and they teach you how to do flips and stuff that you can take to the snow.”

Follow Laetitia on Instagram.

Remember Vodafone's Wild Winter Weekender is on August 10-11 in Queenstown. You can win tickets here, enter before July 13.