Otago's Dry Centre

A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane Walker

BETWEEN Queenstown, where I live, and Dunedin, there’s an aridly picturesque region called Central Otago.

Central Otago is a rain-shadow region, kept dry by the blocking effect of the high mountains around Queenstown. It looks a lot like Outback Australia or parts of the Middle East that I’ve been to. Some call it a desert, though there are a few too many trees and shrubs for that to be literally true.

Though the average year-round temperature isn’t high in Otago as compared to Outback Australia or the Middle East, it gets pretty hot under a blue summer sky in Central all the same — and in Queenstown too, once it has been summer for a while.

Central Otago towns are mostly quite historic by New Zealand standards, with whole streets of stone buildings erected in the 1860s and 1870s for want of timber; buildings that nobody has ever had the heart to demolish.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/otagos-dry-centre