Glenorchy, at the head of Lake Wakatipu, a forty-five-minute drive from Queenstown. The main lodge was built in 1999 for Tom Tusher, a former Levi Strauss general manager who had bought the land in 1971 and who, the lodge’s partners record, had been fishing the South Island since the 1970s. It stands on Wyuna station, a working sheep, cattle and deer farm. Blanket Bay is this register’s clearest case of a fishing habit that hardened into a house.
The house
The bay was named before anyone thought of building on it. The lodge’s history page dates the first European use of the shore to 1861, when “a mob of sheep owned by Mr William Gilbert Rees were sheared on the shore of Lake Wakatipu” by eight shearers working under blankets rigged as shed and shelter. The gold rush of the 1860s followed, the miners working “first at the Invincible Gold Mine in the Rees Valley and later at Wyuna”, where the remnants of more than twenty scheelite mines still stand. “Today Blanket Bay Lodge sits on Wyuna station,” the page says: a working sheep, cattle and deer farm.
Tom Tusher bought the land in 1971 and did not build for a generation. The Hotel Conversation records that he returned “more than two decades later”, bought Wyuna Station as well, and “began to develop what would go on to become the world-renowned Blanket Bay Lodge in the early 90s”, working with the developer John Darby. The lodge itself was built in 1999, and has grown by addition rather than redesign: the Otago Daily Times reported a four-bedroom villa complex of 505 square metres by the Dunedin firm Mason & Wales, “to be hired for about $15,000 a night”, which Tusher said was built “principally to cope with demand”.
What distinguishes it
The bay is named after bedding The lodge’s history page dates the shore’s first use to 1861 and eight shearers working a mob of William Gilbert Rees’s sheep. The blankets used to build the shed and the shelters gave the bay its name. The house that stands there now carries a name issued by a shearing gang.
The land was bought twenty-eight years before the lodge was built Tusher acquired the ground in 1971, according to The Hotel Conversation, and only returned to develop it “in the early 90s”. The main lodge was built in 1999. Few houses in this Part record so long a gap between the purchase and the first guest.
It sits inside a working farm, not a reserve The lodge states that it stands on Wyuna station, “a working sheep, cattle and deer farm”, historically part of the Rees station that covered the eastern side of Lake Wakatipu. The ground is not set aside for the lodge. The surrounding land has a job.
No two published counts of the house agree The South China Morning Post gives twelve guest rooms “which include suites and chalets”; the Otago Daily Times calls it a “13-room lodge”; Qantas Travel Insider counts “just 17 rooms, including four chalets, plus a four-suite villa and the Owner’s Residence”. The lodge’s own accommodation pages give no total at all. The register records the disagreement rather than choosing among them.
The villa was built to meet demand, and said so The Otago Daily Times reported a four-bedroom complex of 505 square metres designed by Mason & Wales of Dunedin, in stone, cedar weatherboards and timber trusses, “for hire for about $15,000 a night”. Tusher told the paper the extension was “principally to cope with demand”. The lodge describes the Villa as four king suites, each with its own fireplace.
It is forty-five minutes by road from Queenstown, at the head of a lake, on a farm that is being farmed. A guest who wants a town outside the door, a choice of restaurants, or an evening that does not end at the lodge will find none of those things within an hour. The house was built around one man’s fly fishing, and the itinerary still leans that way.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.