About & Description

This is a page for everything to do with Lake Tekapo, past and present. To share and connect the past, existing and future residents the remarkable qualities of the people, landscape of the place.

The first people to enter the Mackenzie Basin were Māori. They quarried stone for tools, fished for eel, hunted birds, including moa, and established summer camps along the rivers and lakes. Māori names were given to the inland lakes – Tekapo, Te Kaupururu (Alexandrina), Otetoto (MacGregor), Pukaki, Ohau. The name Tekapo derives from the Māori words Taka (sleeping mat) and Po (night). Māori told white settlers of the grassy plains of the interior, but the Mackenzie Basin really only became known in 1855 when James Mckenzie, a Scottish shepherd was arrested for sheep stealing. Seeking a less conspicuous route for his flock, he ventured inland and discovered the high country that now bears his name. John Sidebottom, the man responsible for McKenzie’s arrest, lodged the first lease application in the basin but failed to take up the 30,000 hectares within the six-month requirement. The lease was cancelled and the land was divided up among other runholders. Within ten years the whole of the Mackenzie Basin, totalling 704,000 hectares, was taken up. In 1857 John and Barbara Hay established Tekapo Station, the first sheep farm in the Mackenzie, on the shores of Lake Tekapo. When the lake is low, remains of the homestead can be seen on the walk to Pines Beach. An accommodation house was established in 1861, along with a ferry across the Tekapo River. Popular as ‘bullocky’ resting place, it became well known throughout the district. In 1881 the foundations of the first bridge were laid. When the Mount Cook-Hermitage Company formed it ran a coach between Fairlie and the Hermitage, stopping for lunch at Lake Tekapo