Barn Hill: one of the basin’s original stories

Long before Queenstown became an international destination, the rhythms of rural life ran deep on this land.

Before golf resorts, cellar doors and luxury estates arrived across the Wakatipu Basin, teams of draught horses cut furrows through these paddocks. Grain was hauled into the old schist loft after harvest. Water from the Arrow Irrigation Scheme crossed this property during the Depression years. Autumn duck shoots marked a changing of the seasons.

And through it all, the landscape barely changed.

Located at 18 Barn Hill Drive, Arrow Junction, a 4.4ha (more or less) estate occupies an elevated position between Arrowtown and Lake Hayes, framed by an expansive outlook toward Coronet Peak and wider alpine basin. At its centre sits a rare schist stone loft – a simple agricultural structure that carries with it more than a century of local farming history.

‘Barn Hill’ traces its roots to the district's earliest European settlement. Historical records show the land was first surveyed in 1865, before passing into private ownership as part of the basin’s gradual transition from auriferous reserve to productive farmland – placing the estate among the area’s earliest farming conversions, as the region evolved from transient goldfields into permanent settlement.

Remarkably, Barn Hill has been held by just two families - the Shaws and the Bunns - since the early twentieth century.

From the early 1900’s, the Shaw family shaped the land with barley and oats, grazing prize cattle across the basin while teams of horses operated the farm long before machinery arrived. The old schist loft, believed to have been constructed around the 1930s alongside pioneering irrigation works, became part of the fabric of the farm - storing grain, and standing quietly over a landscape defined by permanence.

Since 1972, the Bunn family have continued that legacy of stewardship, carefully maintaining the property’s connection to its original rural character.

Bayleys Queenstown sales team Sarena Glass and Sarah McBride, who are marketing the property for sale by deadline, closing at 12:00 pm on Wednesday, 17th June 2026 (unless sold prior), say opportunities of Barn Hill’s nature are exquisitely rare within the Wakatipu Basin, and wider New Zealand.

“There are only a handful of properties left where the story of the land still feels visible,” Glass says. “Barn Hill isn’t simply a lifestyle holding, it’s a property where the landscape, buildings and history remain genuinely connected.”

Positioned in a private enclave, the estate combines scale with immediate access to some of the basin’s most established lifestyle and hospitality destinations, including Arrowtown, Millbrook Resort, Ayrburn and the wider walking and cycling trail network connecting the region’s vineyards, alpine landscapes and lakefront reserves.

Yet, despite its proximity to Queenstown’s rapid evolution, the property retains a distinctly timeless quality – shaped by open land, changing seasons and enduring connection to the landscape.

McBride says that authenticity is becoming increasingly difficult to replicate.

“In a market that has changed rapidly, genuinely original landholdings are absolute treasures,” she says. “What makes Barn Hill compelling is that it still feels grounded in the original character of the Wakatipu Basin.”

For the current owners, who have cared for the property since the early 1970s, the hope is that the old schist loft – weathered, enduring, and deeply connected to the surrounding landscape – finds a new custodian prepared to carry its story forward to the next generation.