Arrowtown Travel Guide

The Arrowtown Chinese Settlement occupies a small gully beside Buckingham Street in Arrowtown and preserves the remains of a Chinese miners' camp from the Otago gold rush of the 1860s. Large numbers of Chinese miners travelled across the world to work the Arrow River diggings, and facing various restrictions they built a separate settlement of simple stone and timber huts on this riverside slope. The site has been tidied and partly reconstructed, keeping the low stone huts, earth ovens and traces of daily life, with interpretation panels explaining the miners' circumstances and gold-working methods. It is a short walk from Arrowtown's main street and its Chinese miners' hut display.

Arrowtown is a historic gold-mining town in Otago, booming in the 1860s and keeping tidy wooden shops and the Chinese Settlement by the Arrow River. In autumn the poplars turn gold and hills blaze red — New Zealand's richest autumn colour and a town made for nostalgic photography. The Lakes District Museum and gold exhibits revive 19th-century boom and the Chinese miners' story.