Qualla: Lake Pukaki

Lake Pukaki: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wildman NZ, CC BY-SA 4.0. The road that runs along Lake Pukaki has a reputation for crashes, and the cause is not poor engineering or dangerous curves. Drivers round a blind corner on State Highway 8, see the lake for the first time, and try to pull over in unsafe locations because they cannot believe the colour. Lake Pukaki is an improbable shade of turquoise, the result of glacial flour, rock ground to powder by the glaciers that feed the lake and suspended in water so fine it bends light into something that looks chemically impossible.

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Image: Wildman NZ | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Pukaki: Born of Ice

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lake Pukaki is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes that run north to south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin in New Zealand's South Island. The other two are Lake Tekapo and Lake Ohau. All three were formed the same way: as glaciers retreated at the en...

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Image: Krzysztof Golik | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Pukaki: The Drowned Island

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between 1940 and 1967, every five pound note in New Zealand carried an engraved image of Te Kohai Island sitting in Lake Pukaki with the Southern Alps rising behind it. The scene became so familiar that the island earned the nickname "Five Pound Note Island," and in 1964 Evelyn H...

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Image: Krzysztof Golik | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Pukaki: Powering Half a Nation

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sky_xe, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lake Pukaki is no longer simply a lake. It is a reservoir, the centerpiece of the Waitaki hydroelectric scheme that supplies a significant share of New Zealand's electricity. The original outflow at the lake's southern end has been dammed, and canals now carry water through the O...

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Image: Sky_xe | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Pukaki: Fire on the Lakeshore

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Mr. Tickle assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. In August 2020, a scrub fire erupted on the shores of Lake Pukaki and burned for twelve days. The blaze consumed 3,500 hectares and required a firefighting force of 14 helicopter monsoon buckets, two fixed-wing aircraft, and 10 fire engines before it was extinguished at a cost of...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Mr. Tickle assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0