Southern Discoveries is confident its latest expansion into the competitive Queenstown tourism market will be operating as planned from November 1.
The operator, owned by the Dunedin family company Skeggs Group, applied for land use resource consent to establish and operate commercial recreation and commercial activities within Mt Nicholas Station.
The application was received by the Queenstown Lakes District Council on September 20 and is on hold pending further information from the operator. A council planner is scheduled to visit the station next week.
Southern Discoveries proposes its customers will travel to the 42,000ha farm about 20km from the resort on the operator's commercial catamaran Spirit of Queenstown, sailing 365 days a year with up to four return trips per day in summer. Mt Nicolas land-based tours will connect with the boat's timetable, which also includes return lake cruises only.
Consent is sought to conduct woolshed tours, including a merino shearing demonstration, vehicle safari tours through the farm to the musterers' hut and historic points of interest, walking tours around the lake foreshore and to more historic points, plus the retailing of woollen products from sheep reared on the station.
''On arrival at the wharf, the customers will congregate at the woolshed, where they will be welcomed,'' the application said.
''The customers will then move into the newly constructed woolshed extension where they will be shown an agricultural/shearing themed audiovisual display.''
There will be interactive displays and information plinths, collaborations between the operator and New Zealand Merino.
Tours would use a 4WD ''safari'' vehicle carrying up to 22 people and go along Von Valley Rd for about 36km, as far as Bullock Creek. Points of interest include the original schist homestead, the historic beech slab hut and various other points for photographs.
At the musterers' hut, customers will be provided with a meal prepared in Queenstown. Guided half-day walking tours of up to 22 people per tour will visit the lake foreshore, the beech hut and the homestead site through to Lovers Leap.
Customers will be provided with a picnic lunch and refreshments, also from Queenstown.
General manager John Robson, of Te Anau, told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the application was the legal support for what Southern Discoveries had been planning publicly for 18 months.
''The vessel will be operating and we will be providing tourism services from November 1, there's no doubt about that,'' Mr Robson said.
''Whether it's the full gambit will be more reliant on the planners than us.''
