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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 6 (October 1, 1929)

An Amazing Deep

An Amazing Deep.

Fifty miles in length, with a mean breadth of two and one-third miles, and extreme depth of 1,242 feet (as revealed by Mr. Keith Lucas's bathymetrical survey in 1902), Wakatipu is the most markedly glacier-made lake of all our New Zealand freshwater sheets. It is, too, a collecting tank for many snow-fed rivers, some of which, again, have their sources in beautiful alpine tarns. Its outlet is that famous gold-bearing river the Kawarau.

“Come and lift your fortunes now,
Dam the roaring Kawarau.”

More than sixty years ago the scene of frenzied diggers’ activity, and now of the most modern scientific efforts for the salving of hidden gold. It is rather marvellous to think of the depth of this huge water-trough among the mountains. The bottom of the lake, where the floor is almost level, in the south arm near the base of the Bay Peaks and extending thence to the bend of the lake just opposite Queenstown, is more than two hundred feet below ocean level.