Wānaka wasn't always Wānaka — and for decades, it wasn't even the biggest town around.

Wānaka wasn't always Wānaka. For a good chunk of its short European history, the town went by a completely different name, and for decades it was smaller than the gold-mining settlement up the road. Here's how a lakeside sheep station turned into the town people now fly across the world to visit.

Pembroke wouldn't reach a population of 400 until 1960 — nearly a century after Cardrona already had.

Sheep, a River Crossing, and a Name Borrowed from Wales

European settlement in the Upper Clutha Valley began in the 1850s, when runholders started establishing sheep stations across the region. The very first was at Albert Town — the only spot along the Clutha River where settlers could actually get a wagon across it, which tells you a lot about how the rest of the settlement pattern here got decided. The township site itself was surveyed in 1863, and for reasons lost to bureaucratic taste, it was named Pembroke — after Sidney Herbert, Baron Herbert of Lea, a British Cabinet minister who'd never set foot anywhere near the place. The name stuck for the better part of a century.

A Slow Start, Compared to the Neighbours

For its first several decades, Pembroke was very much the quiet cousin of the district. When gold was discovered nearby in 1862 and 1863, Cardrona boomed into the region's biggest town, with 400 permanent residents by 1870. Pembroke, meanwhile, wouldn't hit a population of 400 until 1960 — nearly a century later. Growth picked up gradually through the 1870s, driven by timber milling in the Matukituki and Makarora valleys, with logs floated down the lake to the mill.

The First Tourists Arrive

Tourism has deeper roots here than most people assume. The town's first hotel opened in 1867, and by 1883 a paddle steamer named the Theodore was already running cruises out onto the lake — carrying visitors to see exactly the same water and mountains people come to see today, just from a slower, smokier boat. The world's first sheepdog trials were also reportedly held here in 1867, which is a genuinely strange thing for one small township to be able to claim.

Pembroke Becomes Wānaka Again

By 1940, having a town called Pembroke sitting on a lake called Wānaka had become confusing enough that residents changed it back, officially reverting the town's name on the 1st of September that year. The lake and town names were both formally given their macrons decades later — the lake in 2019, the town in 2021 — closing out a naming story that had taken the better part of 160 years to settle. What started as a river crossing with a few thousand sheep is now one of New Zealand's best-known outdoor towns, and the lake that gave the place its name back is still exactly what people come here for.

Whether you're here to fish or just to take it all in, a half-day fishing charter or a half-day lake tour is a good way to see the place for yourself.