Things to do in Arrowtown

Arrowtown sits 20 minutes (20 km) from Queenstown, a gold-mining settlement that dates to 1862 and still shows it: Buckingham Street is lined with roughly 60 original miners' cottages and stone buildings, now shops and cafes rather than a rebuilt set.

At the western end, the remains of the Chinese Settlement are genuine structures left by the Cantonese miners who worked the district from the 1860s onwards, not a staged reconstruction. The Lakes District Museum covers the gold-rush years in detail and is worth an hour.

Visitors can still pan for gold along the Arrow River with hired equipment; most come away with a few flecks, not a fortune. Autumn colour along the avenues peaks in a roughly two-week window through April, and the town's Autumn Festival is timed around it.