The Shotover River is located in the Otago region of the South Island of New Zealand. The name correctly suggests that this 60 kilometre-long river is fast flowing, with numerous rapids. The river was named Shotover by the first European, William Gilbert Rees to settle on the shores of Lake Wakatipu in 1860. He named it after his business partner, George Gamie's English estate, Shotover Park. The river had been previously called Tummel by two Scottish pioneers named Cameron and MacDonald who had passed through the area before Rees arrived. It was also referred to as the Overshot by the early goldminers, but it was the name Shotover that stuck, The river flows generally south from the Southern Alps on its journey running through the Skippers Canyon, before draining into the Kawarau River east of Queenstown.
In July 1991 and June 1992 the river froze from bank-to-bank, near Skippers Canyon, and car-tyre sized blocks of ice disrupted tourist activities in July 2007.
The Oxenbridge Tunnel at Arthurs Point is a 170 m (560 ft) tunnel that was part of a failed mining scheme by the Oxenbridge brothers, attempting to divert water from the river to recover gold from the riverbed. It was registered as a Category II Historic Place in 1985, and is used by rafters and kayakers.
The Edith Cavell bridge crosses the river at Arthur's Point.
Read more about Shotover River: Tourist Operations
Famous quotes containing the word river:
“There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?”
—Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941)