Operating out of Central Stories museum in Alexandra, Ninian Peterson is running tours of two or four hours which begin and end at the Museum and visit areas around the district.
Wine tours and gold panning tours are on offer although there was room for people to customise their trips if they wanted to.
Mr Peterson was raised in Central Otago but left to work at Mataura for 35 years. He has returned to set up a tour guide business which he said was very flexible.
Visitors are taught how to pan for gold if they had an interest in that particular historic part of Central Otago and then they could go out and practise their skill around the district.
The trips travel as far away as Thomsons Gorge and there are numerous walks available closer to town.
The tours would run all year round but the mountainous trips would be restricted to summer for safety reasons.
Mr Peterson said he would be explaining things that people would otherwise not have ben aware of as they walked in the country.
And it's not only tourists who would benefit. "I have been with people who have these walks for years and they'll say, `I didn't realise this' or `I didn't realise that'," Mr Peterson said.
Museum director Brian Patrick said it was wonderful for the museum having the tour that would take people out into the real world to real sites after learning about them in the museum.
