Half-Day Film Locations 4WD Tour with Gold Panning Queenstown

Queenstown Hill and The Remarkables

The tour starts with a climb above the town to Queenstown Hill, where the whole of Lake Whakatipu and the jagged wall of The Remarkables open up in front of you. This range, rising to more than 2,300 metres and often streaked with snow until early summer, appeared on screen as the Misty Mountains, and from this lookout you understand why the filmmakers chose it. Across the lake lies Deer Park Heights, the rolling farmland used for the Refugees of Rohan and the Battle of the Wargs scenes.

Your guide shows how the scenes were framed and tells stories from the shoot while you take photos. The Queenstown Hill lookout is also one of the best viewpoints for the town itself, with Queenstown Bay, the Frankton Arm and Cecil Peak laid out below. Allow about twenty minutes here before the 4WD vehicle heads east along the lake.

Kawarau Gorge and the Pillars of the Kings

Leaving Queenstown, the road follows the Kawarau River as it cuts through the Kawarau Gorge, a narrow valley of schist cliffs and swirling blue-green water. On screen this stretch of river became the Pillars of the Kings, the giant stone statues the Fellowship passes by boat, which were added digitally above the real cliffs. The gorge also contains the historic 1880 Kawarau suspension bridge, built to carry miners and their wagons to the goldfields.

The tour stops at a viewpoint where your guide lines up the real landscape with the film image so you can see exactly where the statues stood. Kawarau Gorge is an easy twenty-minute drive from Queenstown and is a highlight of any Lord of the Rings tour from Queenstown; the mid-morning light on the river is especially good for photos.

Arrowtown and the Gladden Fields

Arrowtown is the best-preserved gold-rush town in the Queenstown region. Gold was found in the Arrow River in 1862 and within months thousands of miners had arrived; the tree-lined main street of timber and stone cottages from that era still stands, and the town glows gold itself in autumn when the poplars and sycamores turn. Just outside the village, the willow-fringed banks of the Arrow River doubled as the Gladden Fields, the place where the One Ring was lost in the opening of the trilogy.

From here the 4WD leaves the sealed road and follows the historic gold-mining track up the river valley, crossing the shallow Arrow River several times, an exciting part of the trip for children and adults alike. The track leads to the location used for the Ford of Bruinen, where the river was flooded on screen.

Arrow River gold panning and morning tea

At the Ford of Bruinen location the vehicle stops on the riverbank for a relaxed break. Your guide sets out tea, coffee and hot chocolate with banana cake and biscuits, then hands out pans and shows you the traditional way the 1860s miners worked the gravel: scoop, swirl, tip and look for the flash of colour in the bottom of the pan. The Arrow River was one of the richest gold rivers in New Zealand, and small flakes are still found today.

Gold panning at the Arrow River is a favourite moment for families, and anything you find is yours to keep. The guide also explains the hard life of the miners who built the track you have just driven along. This part of the tour takes about forty minutes and is the ideal spot for photos of the river and the mountains.

Skippers Canyon Road and Lighthouse Rock

The final stage climbs the slopes of Coronet Peak, Queenstown's closest ski mountain, and turns onto the Skippers Canyon Road, one of the most famous mountain roads in New Zealand. Hand-cut by miners in the 1880s to reach the goldfields along the Shotover River, the narrow gravel road clings to the side of the canyon with sheer drops to the river hundreds of metres below; rental cars are not allowed on it, which is why a 4WD tour is the best way to see Skippers Canyon.

The tour drives part of the road to Lighthouse Rock, where you step out for the widest panorama of the day: the Shotover gorge, the Wakatipu basin and the mountains that framed so many scenes of the trilogy. From here it is a short descent back to Queenstown, arriving about four hours after you set off.