$50m Queenstown farm for the super rich on sale with its own heli-skiing

Dreaming of escaping the rat-race?

Then Halfway Bay Station could be for you, with its gorgeous lakefront land lying nestled among Queenstown’s snow-capped mountains and giving access to world class fly-fishing and heli-skiing.

Yet, before
you reach for your cheque book, you might need to try winning one – or maybe three – Lotto grand jackpots first.

That’s because selling agents New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty were expecting buyers to put up offers of more than $50 million for the high country farm.

For that kind of cash, the farm came with 18,000ha of pastoral lease, including its own towering mountains, four separate valleys and seven kilometres of shore front land on Lake Wakatipu.

Twenty-three kilometres of the Lochy River – a world-renowned fly-fishery flowing with rainbow trout – also passes through the station.

It even has its own hydro-electric system generating power from a river.

What it doesn’t have, however, is road access.

The only way onto the farm is by a nine-minute helicopter ride from Queenstown’s airport or a boat trip across Lake Wakatipu.

Sotheby’s agent Matt Finnigan says the farm’s sale was effectively a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity for one of New Zealand’s super rich.

“Large, undisturbed high country landscapes around lakes are very limited anyway, but then you get to Queenstown and we have no more than a handful,” he says.

“They very seldom change hands.”

The farm will most likely be snapped up as a hidden retreat for a very wealthy Kiwi citizen or resident or syndicate of buyers.

Foreign buyers will likely find it hard to gain approval from the Overseas Investment Office to make the purchase.

And while most sales of elite high country stations typically take place privately rather than on the open market, Halfway Bay Station is being marketed for sale publicly.

Finnigan says it is probably one of the most impressive high country farms near Queenstown to be put publically on sale in the last 20-30 years

“To have something that large, that private, that close to a resort town – it puts it right up there in desirability,” he says.

Like other grand stations, most of Halfway Bay Station’s land is subject to a pastoral lease with restrictive conditions limiting activities on the site to largely farming purposes.

The station’s current owners bought the farm 40-years ago and – as with other famous high country farms snapped up by wealthy buyers, such as Branches Station, near Coronet Peak – they continue to run sheep and cattle on the farm.

Finnigan predicts a future buyer will operate the farm along similar lines, whereby they continued farming but did not try to make a big return from it, choosing instead to protect the natural ecosystem.

Similarly, a future buyer can build new homes on the small patches of freehold land on the station, but will be unlikely to be allowed to build a hotel or major commercial building due to the pastoral lease restrictions.

The picturesque farm did not currently have a grand mansion on it.

Its current owners instead built a more humble “Owner’s Cottage”, while all the station’s other buildings – including a woolshed and manager’s house – were farming related.

Yet for any future buyer, the station’s appeal willlikely lie as much in its rugged, wilderness as in the creature comforts of any mansion.

Those staying at the property can embark on long hikes up its valleys, passing by the side of rivers and streams and even staying in mountain huts that were mostly used by workers at mustering time.

They can stop to fly-fish the Lochy River or pass into the 65,000ha Eyre Mountain Conservation Park that borders the station.

It could also be possible to gain permits to run heli-skiing trips onto the station’s mountain peaks, Finnigan says.

For those less active, there is also the chance to boat into the quiet coves and bays of Lake Wakatipu.

Describing the station as a “stunning trophy holding”, Finnigan’s fellow selling agent Russell Reddell says the station’s beauty lies in its “enormous size, scale and scope, as well as (its) complete seclusion”.

Better buy your Lotto tickets now.