Lake Dunstan has always been a man-made lake, formed on the Clutha River in Central Otago by the Clyde Dam in 1992. Now it's home to the South Island's only water park.
Photo: Kiwi Water Park
Ten thousand square metres of inflatable equipment to slide down, clamber over and jump off, is moored to the lake bed.
It has been set up by Queenstown business woman Emily Rutherford, who returned from London during lockdown with a brilliant idea.
She took inspiration from her years of travel, coming across water parks in Europe, Dubai, Canada and the USA.
Rutherford tells Summer Times with Jesse Mulligan the project was years in the making and that Covid-19 presented her the opportunity to see her dream become reality.
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She says she was surprised no one had beaten her to the punch, but quickly learned why that was.
Getting consent from the local council was a lot trickier than Rutherford imagined and that building the park was as equally challenging.
“One of the reasons we’re able to do it on Lake Dunstan is because it’s a man-made lake, so we wouldn’t be able to do it in Queenstown or Wanaka or any of the natural lakes because they’re under the natural beauty resource kind of things where you can’t do this kind of thing.”
“We got our park bespoke designed by a Chinese company… we had resource consent to open on the 1st of December, but we had major shipping issues which I think everybody’s having at the moment.
“At one point the ports were so bad we were told we may not get it till mid-January, so I thought we might not be able to open this year, but luckily it ended up getting in just in time.”
Once the park arrived, setting it up on Lake Dunstan was the next obstacle to jump.
Photo: Supplied / Kiwi Water Park
What she thought would take a few days to set up turned into three weeks, starting at the beginning of December.
Rutherford required cranes, engineers and professional divers to install 60 tonnes of moorings to anchor the park to the bottom of Lake Dunstan so that it wouldn’t blow away or be torn by the wind.
The most stressful part of the whole experience for Rutherford was watching the costly cranes sit idle for three days due to high winds.
However, it was all worth it when the park opened on the 27th of December.
“We’ve sold out completely, we turned away a few hundred people yesterday, it’s just been absolutely crazy, I can’t believe it to be honest.
“It got to the point that it’s been so busy that we’ve been asking people to bring their own life jackets because we’re taking so long to fit everybody with the right sized life jackets. We’ve got hundreds of life jackets, but it just takes so long and then people aren’t getting on the park as quickly as they want.
The cost to enter the park ranges from $35-$45 depending on the time and length spent on it.
Rutherford says she wanted to make the park as accessible as possible for the average person.
“I’m from Queenstown, my Dad’s from Wanaka, so I’m really from this area and I think what this kind of Central Otago-Queenstown-Wanaka area is missing was something affordable, because most activities are in the hundreds, each, per person.
“I really wanted something that people could afford to do, so I didn’t really want to make it crazy expensive.”
The reaction, she says, has been the most rewarding of the project.
“Everyone thought I was crazy going into business this year because if we go into Level 3 I’ve got to close it and we’d lose a lot of money, but I really just believed in the idea, so it’s been amazing to have such a great response from the community and have so many people support it.”
The park will be open until the end of Summer.
Photo: Supplied / Kiwi Water Park