Kawarau Bridge

The bridge across the Kawarau River on the main road south from Queenstown photographed from a jet boat. The gates were designed to block the river to allow extraction of gold but due to a slight mis-calculation this never worked. The jet boat ride starts in Queenstown, goes across the lake to the Kawarau River and partly up the Shotover River. Jet boats are the only way to get across the shallow areas of the river where only a few centimeters of water is available. The jet boat is, of course, a New Zealand invention (A slight correction here. The modern version in the jet boat: efficient jet unit, shallow draft, etc, is a NZ invention. Jet propulsion for boats is actually over 100 years old).

The trickiest thing aboout taking this photo was to keep the camera still and dry. Not only was the boat throwing up a bit of water but there was also some light rain.