Poolburn Reservoir

Where it sits. Poolburn Reservoir lies on the high tussock uplands of Rough Ridge in Central Otago, at roughly seven hundred metres, between the Ida Valley on one side and the Maniototo basin on the other. It is an artificial lake with a deeply indented shoreline, filling a shallow basin among schist tors — the blocky, fluted grey outcrops that are the signature landform of this part of Otago, weathered out of the bedrock and standing in ranks like abandoned masonry. There is no town here, no power line to speak of, and no shelter from the wind. In summer the ground is straw-coloured and hot; in winter the lake freezes hard enough that locals have skated on it.

Built for water, not for looks. The dam was completed in 1931 to store irrigation water for the Ida Valley scheme, part of the long public works effort that turned a dry, marginal district into productive farmland. Central Otago is New Zealand's most continental climate — summer days above thirty-five degrees, winter nights below minus ten, and annual rainfall low enough that without stored water most of the basin floor would still be rabbit country. Around the reservoir's shore stand dozens of small holiday huts, known locally as cribs, built mostly by Ida Valley and Maniototo farming families from the 1930s onward. Many have no road access and are reached by boat; almost none have mains power. They exist for brown trout, for duck shooting in May, and for the long summer evenings. They are private property, and the reservoir is one of the few genuinely lived-in landscapes on this list rather than a scenic reserve.

On screen. The tor country above the reservoir was used for Rohan in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The sequence filmed here is the raid on the Rohan village by Saruman's Dunlending allies — the burning huts, and the mother lifting her two children, Éothain and Freda, onto a horse and sending them east to Edoras to raise the alarm. The set was temporary and there is nothing left of it; what remains is the ground itself, which is the point. The schist tors, the bare tussock and the enormous sky read as an occupied but unforested frontier in a way no forest location could. Worth stating plainly: the reservoir is not the location, the rolling tor-strewn ground on the approach is, and it looks much the same in every direction.

A landscape with its own artists. This corner of Central Otago has a genuine cultural presence in New Zealand well beyond the films. The painter Grahame Sydney built a career on precisely this light — the hard-edged shadows on schist, the isolated woolsheds, the empty gravel roads under enormous cloud — and Brian Turner's poetry comes from the same country. Nearby Oturehua has the preserved Hayes Engineering Works, where a farming family patented and manufactured wire strainers and fencing tools from the 1890s. Ophir, over the ridge, keeps a stone post office of 1886 and a suspension bridge of 1880, and regularly records the coldest temperature in the country.

Do not confuse it with the gorge. The Otago Central Rail Trail passes through the Poolburn Gorge some distance below and downstream, where the old Otago Central branch line crosses a curved viaduct roughly thirty-seven metres high and threads two hand-cut tunnels. That is a separate and much more accessible attraction, reached on foot or by bike from Auripo or Oturehua, and it is not the reservoir. Cyclists on the trail regularly assume they have seen Poolburn when they have not.

What you actually see today. A grey-green sheet of water broken into arms and bays, tors standing along every skyline, thyme and briar in the gullies, and huts painted whatever colour was going cheap in the decade they were built. Wild thyme, escaped from nineteenth-century gold-camp plantings, scents the whole district and flowers purple in November. Rabbits are everywhere and have been a plague here since the 1880s. There is no formed walking track around the reservoir, but the tussock is open and the tors invite scrambling; keep an eye on where the vehicle is, because the ground repeats itself convincingly and there are no landmarks a stranger can name.

Getting there and timing. Two approaches. From the west, turn off at Omakau or Moa Creek and climb from the Ida Valley on a steep unsealed road. From the east, take the Old Dunstan Road from Clarks Junction or Paerau — the original 1862 gold-rush route from Dunedin to the Dunstan diggings, still an unformed public road, spectacular, exposed and entirely unsuitable for a low car or a caravan. Either way the final climb is rough gravel, dry-weather driving, and the route can be blocked by snow from roughly May to October. There are no facilities at all: no water, no toilets at most points, no fuel, no shop, and no mobile coverage. Take everything with you and take it out again. Fishing requires an Otago licence, the huts are not for public use, and gates should be left as found.