Qualla: Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge

Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Nyman, CC BY 2.0. Pilots approaching Queenstown Airport know it as Bungy Bridge -- a mandatory reporting point where general aviation aircraft check in before threading through the mountains toward the runway. That a 19th-century suspension bridge serves as a modern navigation waypoint captures something essential about this structure. The Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge has been reinventing its purpose for nearly a century and a half, from goldfield highway to obsolete relic to the place where commercial bungee jumping was born. It hangs 43 meters above the Kawarau River, and it has never stopped being the most interesting way across.

Image: Robert Nyman | CC BY 2.0

Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge: A Road to the Goldfields

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve & Jem Copley, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the late 1870s, Central Otago's gold rush was past its initial frenzy but far from finished. Miners, merchants, and machinery still needed to cross the Kawarau River to reach the diggings beyond. Engineer Harry Higginson designed a suspension bridge to span the gorge, and cons...

Image: Steve & Jem Copley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge: The Leap That Changed Everything

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve & Jem Copley, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bridge might have remained a footnote in goldfield history if not for AJ Hackett and Henry van Asch. In 1988, Hackett -- who had already made headlines by bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower -- chose the Kawarau bridge as the site for the world's first permanent commercial bu...

Image: Steve & Jem Copley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge: Where Trails Converge

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chee.hong, CC BY 2.0. The bridge sits in a Department of Conservation reserve between the start of the Crown Range Road and the Gibbston wine-growing area, in one of the most scenically concentrated corridors in New Zealand. The Queenstown Trail -- a network of walking and cycling tracks -- crosses th...

Image: chee.hong | CC BY 2.0