Frankton resident Bill McDonald researched and wrote Queenstown's Farms & Sheep Stations, which was launched in the Lakes District Museum, in Arrowtown, earlier this month.
Mr McDonald was raised on Ben Lomond sheep station and farmed at Five Rivers, in Southland, for 50 years, before retirement, he said.
"Queenstown's Farms & Sheep Stations focuses mainly on the 1930s and 1940s, when there were about 100.
Now there's about three or four and a lot of them are lying vacant, waiting to be sold."
He is a member of the Queenstown and District Historical Society, which approached him about two years ago to write a compendium.
The society financially supported him during his research and paid the publishing costs.
"I'll be 80 next year and once my age group's gone, no-one will know about the farms.
I knew if it's not written down now, it'll disappear," he said.
The result is a 160-page reference book, illustrated from the museum's archives.
- Queenstown's Farms & Sheep Stations is available for $26 at the museum
