Photo: W. Bulach (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of Arrowtown, a loop of a couple of kilometres. It starts at the Lakes District Museum, the old Bank of New Zealand whose vault held the miners' gold, and follows Buckingham Street to the schist retaining wall above Bush Creek Flat. Below lie Ah Lum's Store, five rooms in a building about 8 by 5 metres, and the Chinese Settlement, founded from the late 1860s by miners invited to rework the goldfields, who lived under open prejudice and, from 1881, a poll tax charged only to Chinese arrivals. At the Arrow River the walk tells of Jack Tewa's gold find in August 1862 and the 1,500 miners who followed by the end of that year. It then passes St John's Presbyterian Church of 1873, St Paul's Anglican Church of 1871 and St Patrick's on Hertford Street, before ending among the miners' cottages and at the schist gaol of the mid-1870s.
10 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 27 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 3 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Lakes District Museum, Buckingham Street, Ah Lum's Store, Arrowtown Chinese Settlement.
Arrow River, St John's Presbyterian Church, St Paul's Anglican Church and Vestry.
St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Arrowtown Cottage Precinct, Arrowtown Gaol.
The former Bank of New Zealand, whose vault held the miners' gold, now the museum of the Queenstown Lakes District.
A schist store of five rooms in about 8 by 5 metres, where Ah Lum ran a shop and acted as banker to the Chinese miners.
Reconstructed huts of the settlement founded from the late 1860s, telling of the miners' lives and the poll tax imposed on them.
Where Jack Tewa found gold in August 1862, starting a rush that brought more than 1,500 miners to the river by the end of that year.
The schist church that opened in July 1873, thought to have been built by Chinese labourers, beside two Wellingtonia trees.
The small schist gaol of the mid-1870s, built for gold-rush petty crime in place of chaining offenders to a log.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 10 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 10 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Arrowtown — the Gold Town and the Chinese Settlement, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
10 narration points, including Lakes District Museum, Buckingham Street, Arrowtown Chinese Settlement, Arrow River and St Paul's Anglican Church and Vestry. That is about 14 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 10 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.