Station Life

Mount Cook Station is situated on the north-eastern side of Lake Pukaki in the South Island of New Zealand.

 

This 2619 hectare property stretches approximately 20km along the eastern shore of Lake Pukaki and up through the Tasman Valley. Although it is long, it is narrow at only 4km wide, with the highest point 946 metres above sea level. Throughout the farm, there are spectacular views of Aoraki/Mt Cook, the Southern Alps, Lake Pukaki and the Jollie and Tasman Rivers.

 

Unfortunately, over the past 50 years, wilding trees have spread over much of the station. These consist of Pine, Larch and Douglas Fir. The tree spread has been huge and is starting to move across the northwestern Mackenzie Basin.

 

We are undertaking a huge operation over the next 10 years to try and remove these wildings and to restore the land back into its original state, however as these trees were signed up under the Carbon Credit scheme, it is proving to be an expensive and major task.

 

At the present time, we are grazing breeding Angus cattle on the station, but once the land has been cleared, we hope to reintroduce merino sheep.

 

There are also 250 red deer and 200 fallow deer that roam around the property, along with some Himalayan Tahr found hiding out in the bush throughout the station.