Changelog

The town page now opens with a colored-pencil drawing of the lake and the sawtooth peaks of The Remarkables seen across the water from Queenstown's foreshore.

The roads out of Queenstown cross country that snows even when the valley doesn't. This new tool reads the forecast over the Crown Range and the Kawarau Gorge — how much snow is coming, how low the snow line is dropping, and whether a cold, wet night could ice the road — and pairs each pass with its own official road status: the council's daily report for the Crown Range, NZTA for the gorge. It describes the weather, not whether a road is open; that call stays with the road authorities, and the page says so.

The question people ask most before moving here is whether a local wage covers the rent. This new tool lets you put in your hourly pay and see your take-home after New Zealand tax, then what's left each week once rent and the essentials come out. The rents come from local reporting, the tax is worked out on the current Inland Revenue rates, and it's honest that it's a rough guide — it links IRD's own calculator and a free budgeting tool to check against.

Queenstown, on Lake Wakatipu, now has its first tools — built for the people who live and work there through a hard winter. There's a winter air-quality check for the woodsmoke that settles in the basin on cold nights; a plain-language guide for new arrivals and seasonal workers covering the roads and passes (Crown Range and the Kawarau Gorge), snow chains, the rent reality, buses, doctors and the airport curfew; the local numbers worth saving; and a clear rundown of the newer rules residents keep looking up — chains on council roads, the freedom-camping bylaw and the proposed overnight parking ban.