The Southern Alps, an expanse of mountains that runs the length of New Zealand’s South Island, are perhaps the country’s most recognisable landscape. The snow-capped peaks, bucolic hills and glassy lakes have played backdrop to fantastical film sets, been plastered onto wine bottles and used as marketing material to sell merino wool. They are framed as both imposing obstacles to conquer and as idyllic symbols, as in Cass, the painting by New Zealand modernist Rita Angus, whose portrayal of a small red railway station set against the undulating earth earned her global acclaim.
In the eastern part of the Alps, an area the Dalai Lama once called “the spiritual centre of the universe”, lies Flock Hill Station, a working farm of 36,000 acres that includes – as of this month – a luxury homestead. The new accommodation was completed over two years at a cost of around NZD$12mn (about £6.2mn), and has been designed as an elegant base from which to explore the wild beauty of this part of the country.
