101st birthday celebration for 'Lady of the Lake'

Real Journeys co-founder Olive, Lady Hutchins cuts the cake to celebrate the 101st birthday of TSS Earnslaw, during a special return cruise on Frankton Arm for almost 200 guests from Queenstown and Arrowtown primary schools and Ripponburn Hospital & Home, Cromwell, yesterday.

Real Journeys chief executive Richard Lauder told passengers the Dunedin-built ''Lady of the Lake'' will be kept in service for another century, helped by another eight-week slipway survey next winter.

The Earnslaw travels 40,000km over 3500 hours on the lake every year.

Mr Lauder said the only coal-fired passenger-carrying steamship still in operation in the southern hemisphere will soon be ferrying passengers to a refurbished Colonel's Homestead at Walter Peak Station, with new gourmet barbecue and morning or afternoon tea menus, from December 1.