Today's photograph from the Lakes District Museum collection shows one of the tourism pioneer's six buses, three of which were open-top, in action.
In those days, tourists got to the far reaches of Lake Wakatipu and beyond by taking TSS Earnslaw from Queenstown, disembarking at Kinloch and then going for a bus ride up the valley to the Routeburn Track, complete with a commentary by the driver.
Although the trip was relatively short, it involved 11 gate openings and 22 creek crossings.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Harry's Routeburn Valley Motors bus company was at its peak, the six buses carrying up to 365 people a day.
But changes came about, first in 1962 when the Queenstown-Glenorchy road was completed and then in 1974 when the Dart River bridge was opened, allowing motorists to drive from Queenstown to Kinloch.
A few years later, Harry and his wife, Connie, retired and moved to Mosgiel. Harry died in July 2003, aged 94, while a resident in the Ripponburn Home at Cromwell.
These days, one of his original buses, built in 1937 and now suitably restored, operates as a tour bus between Queenstown and Arrowtown for the Remarkables Experience company, run by Harry's nephew, Neville Bryant.
