| One of the most visited regions of the South Island, | | | | region of climatic extremes, with some of the lowest |
| Central Otago is at the same time one of the least | | | | winter and highest summer temperatures in the |
| known. Tourists travel through it on the way to Alpine | | | | country. Many parts of Central Otago are arid and |
| resorts on its fringes, but few of them know the rock | | | | barren but they were not always so. About 1500 |
| studded ranges and the bare, lonely plains at the heart | | | | years ago, for example, the land was swathed with in |
| of the plateau. | | | | thick tussock and scrub, and there were still signs of a |
| Central Otago is a great fragmented schist plateau. It | | | | dying forest. |
| rises 600 m and more above the coastal strip and | | | | Everywhere in Central Otago various remoteness and |
| holds several broad basins which run generally in the | | | | there is desolation. The rock freckled brown hills roll into |
| northeast to southwest direction, and lie between wide, | | | | the far distance, there is solitude and space and the |
| gently graded ranges of hills and mountains. The | | | | broad sweep of blue skies. In the 1860s prospectors |
| landscape alone, with its rock studded brown hills, exert | | | | battled their way up the east bank of the river, looking |
| a magnetism that draws people back. | | | | for gold. Within weeks of the first discovery, the tents |
| One of Central Otago's greatest attractions is its | | | | of thousands of miners crammed the gullies and by |
| continental climate - dry all year and frosty in winter. | | | | the end of July 1861 more than 11,000 people were |
| Compared with other areas of New Zealand it is a | | | | working in the goldfields. |