New Zealand is the land of the long tourist queue

DON KNOWLER explains why New Zealand’s beauty is at risk from millions of visitors, and how there are some important lessons for Tasmania.

ONE of the most impressive natural attractions in the world — the Southern Alps of New Zealand — is being loved to death by waves of foreign tourists.

This assessment comes not from frustrated Australian visitors who are used to the great wide open spaces back home but from the New Zealand Government itself.

With tourism numbers rising to 3.7 million visitors last year — in a country with a population of less than five million — the government is being forced to take drastic measures.

Among these is increasing a tourism tax on foreign visitors to $NZ25, not so much to restrict numbers but to pay for the infrastructure that is required, and will be required in future, to cope with the rising influx.

And as New Zealand braces for even more tourists this year — tourism is expected to grow 37 per cent to 5.1 million visitors in six years — there are lessons for Tasmania in its policy of being “open for business” to promote its natural assets.

Tourism and its impact has become a major talking point in New Zealand, especially in the light of crowded roads and rising accommodation prices. The issue of “freedom campers”, visitors parking camper vans or pitching tents in scenic areas which are not dedicated camping spots, has also emerged, along with the danger of foreign drivers not used to driving on the left-hand side of the road.

The New Zealand tourist boom is being largely fuelled by visitors from China, which make up the second largest influx — at 444,846 last year — after Australian tourists, with approaching one and a half million. Tourism is New Zealand’s largest export earner, overtaking dairy in 2016.

How to cope with the tourism wave took centre stage in the city of Dunedin earlier this month where New Zealand’s biggest tourism industry event, Trenz, was taking place.

Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis said that, while many Kiwis were questioning the country’s capacity to sustain tourism, New Zealand needed to embrace the influx of visitors.

Of the country’s ability to grow the industry, he said: “We can and we will. I say bring it on.”

But he conceded, “It’s a problem at peak times — but the negative perceptions persist and I don’t want our environmental and tourist reputation damaged.”

A motorhome travelling near the snowcapped Mt Cook/Aoraki Mountain Range on the South Island of New Zealand. Picture: iSTOCK

He added that overcrowding and the resultant environmental problems were the opposite of how New Zealand saw itself as a destination, and how it wanted to be seen and remembered by international visitors.

Despite the large number of tourists, a New Zealand holiday remains a wonderful experience, even when acknowledging you can’t view the country’s wonders at your own pace, and outings are best arranged around peak times during the day.

A New Zealand road trip I made with my wife earlier this month started in Christchurch and our slow journey south was always predicated by the advice I had received from my New Zealand relatives — get ahead of the tourists, or behind them.

Avoid peak times, even if travelling in the autumn — out of the busy summer and winter skiing seasons — as we were.

On our first stop, Lake Tepako, the view of the historic church nestled on an island was framed at sunrise by lines of photographers bending over tripods, and at Queenstown I delayed my plan to sail on an historic steamship on Lake Wakatipu to mid-afternoon. The morning cruises had been packed to the bulkheads.

Before arriving in Queenstown, which nestles under the Remarkables mountain range, we had been told to avoid a takeaway restaurant which Lonely Planet describes as selling one of the top burgers in the world.

A balloon over the Canterbury Plains on New Zealand’s South Island.

The cafe has obtained such a reputation via social media that queues stretch along Shotover St on which it is situated in the town centre, and in summer sometimes around the block.

Planning to visit Milford Sound, with a stay overnight at the gateway town of Te Anau, we were advised to delay our departure until mid-morning, after tour buses had left.

Instead we drove out at dawn. When we arrived at Milford Sound some 118km distant the coach park was empty, but returning from the first cruise about noon I counted at least 50 coaches.

On the way out, the coaches were still arriving, squeezing across single lane bridges and through the 1km-long Homer Tunnel on the route to the Sound.

Driving on New Zealand roads also has its hazards. The hire car we collected at Christchurch Airport had a sign on the dashboard reminding foreign drivers that New Zealanders drive on the left.

Being open for business requires not only control of tourist numbers but ensuring that the natural environment — the very reason tourists make the trip in the first place — is not destroyed. Places really can be loved to death, as New Zealand is finding.

On some sections of scenic roads there were also arrows painted on the tarmac to indicate on what side the driver should be travelling.

New Zealand came as a disappointment in another regard, not necessarily related to the numbers of tourists crowded at its scenic wonders.

Comparing New Zealand with Tasmania, I was struck by how little of the natural vegetation was left in New Zealand, at least visible from its major tourist highways.

Leaving Christchurch I waited for about an hour to see a native tree I could identify, amid the blue gums, the radiata pines and poplars lining the major highway south.

The totara tree was planted in the town of Geraldine by its founders, although I was told all the hills surrounding the picturesque tourist town are clothed in podocarpus totara forests.

The towns of Lake Tekapo, Wanaka and Queenstown where we stayed were dominated by European and American trees, especially the radiata pines, giving these an alpine feel more associated with the northern hemisphere, although I must say to catch the deciduous trees in autumn leaf was spectacular.

Still, I preferred the New Zealand beech forests we saw in the Fiordland National Park towards Milford Sound, and on the eastern slopes of Arthur’s Pass travelling west out of Christchurch a little later, in search of New Zealand’s native mountain parrot, the kea.

We’re lucky that Tasmania still has its native forests intact, and even where there are plantations these are formed of gums, if not always native ones.

Being open for business requires not only control of tourist numbers but ensuring that the natural environment — the very reason tourists make the trip in the first place — is not destroyed. Places really can be loved to death, as New Zealand is finding.

Don Knowler writes the On the Wing column in TasWeekend magazine and is also the author of a recent book on kunanyi/Mt Wellington, The Shy Mountain.