Gladstone Track to the Timaru Creek Road End
Lake Hāwea · Otago · Point to Point
This walk was suggested by the community and checked against the authority quoted above before it was published. The route line comes from official track data. Queenstown Lakes District Council’s own wording: “QLDC has determined that all tracks and reserves (except those listed below) within the control of QLDC are dog exercise areas. Every owner of a dog shall keep that dog on a leash in public areas at all times except within the Rural General Zone or in a dog exercise area. (Queenstown Lakes District Council Dog Control Policy 2020, s11 and s12; none of the eight listed exceptions is at Hāwea.) At the Timaru Creek road end DOC states: Dogs are not allowed on these tracks”. Evidence: the rule-setter’s own published wording. How we check dog rules.
Good to know
Dogs are allowed here. Keep them on the lead, watch for ground-nesting birds and stock, and read the signs at the gate.
About Gladstone Track to the Timaru Creek Road End
Near Lake Hāwea in Otago, Gladstone Track to the Timaru Creek Road End runs 13.5 km as a point-to-point.
Lake Hāwea township to the Timaru Creek road end along the lake’s eastern shore, and it is two very different halves. The first 6.7 km is the Gladstone Track, a wide unsealed foreshore track that leaves Capell Avenue beside the holiday park, passes the Scott’s Beach picnic area and holds the water’s edge all the way to the small settlement at Gladstone. That half is QLDC ground, and the council’s Dog Control Policy makes every QLDC track and reserve a dog exercise area unless it is on the list of eight exceptions, all of which are Queenstown side. A dog under effective voice control may be off the lead there. The second 6.8 km is not a track at all. It is Timaru Creek Road, a public gravel road running north between working high country stations, with farm traffic, stock on and beside the road, and an unbridged ford part way along that is worth thinking twice about after heavy rain. Put the lead on at Gladstone and leave it on. Two hard stops ride with this walk. The first is at Gladstone, where the Te Araroa markers turn inland and climb toward Breast Hill: DOC’s page for that track says "No dogs", so a dog that follows the markers off the shore is on prohibited ground within metres. The second is the road end, and it is absolute. Everything past the carpark is Hāwea Conservation Park, where DOC says "Dogs are not allowed on these tracks" for the Lower Tīmaru River and Tīmaru High River tracks, and the park brochure adds that there is no dog access on the Lake Hāwea side. The line mapped here stops at the road end for that reason, and it is why driving up to the carpark with a dog is a wasted trip: there is nothing at that end a dog is allowed to walk on. At 13.5 km each way this is a big day out and back, so plenty of people walk the Gladstone Track half and turn around at Gladstone.
Graded hard, it climbs about 139 m overall, and takes about 2 hr 55 to walk.
Dogs are allowed here, on the lead. This walk is on the map because Petra & Bowzer suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.
