The Earnslaw is 100 years old this week and Queenstown is celebrating this vintage ship which they call ‘The Lady of the Lake’.
It now takes tourists across Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown. However, 100 years ago it carried passengers, goods and farm animals from Kingston, at the south end of the lake, to Queenstown, and then to Glenorchy at the north end of the lake. There was no road in those days. It was also the time of the gold rush in Central Otago. Many of the passengers were gold miners.
By the end of the 1960s, there was a road from Kingston to Queenstown, and from Queenstown to Glenorchy. The Earnslaw was no longer needed. It was in a bad condition when a tourism company bought it and repaired it. It is now a popular coal-powered steamship which takes tourists across the lake from Queenstown to a high country sheep farm.
Yesterday, invited guests, dressed in clothes of 1912, travelled on the Earnslaw to celebrate the first trip from Kingston to Queenstown.
Vocabulary
vintage – very old and admired
gold rush – many people (mostly men) rushed to areas where someone had found gold. They became gold miners.
(Apologies for sound quality. This is temporary.)