When Thomas Arthur discovered gold at what became Arthurs Point in 1862, the Shotover earned a reputation as one of the richest gold-bearing rivers in the world. The claim was not exaggeration. Arthur himself extracted 200 ounces - nearly six kilograms - in just eight days. The news turned Queenstown from a pastoral settlement into a boomtown practically overnight. For the next several decades, the Shotover was panned, cradled, sluiced, and dredged by thousands of miners working every accessible beach along its 75-kilometre length. Two tributaries, Moke Creek and Moonlight Creek, yielded their own gold. The river runs south from the Southern Alps through Skippers Canyon, draining the terrain between the Richardson and Harris mountain ranges before joining the Kawarau River east of Queenstown. Along much of that course, it flows through gorges so steep and narrow that reaching the water required ropes, ladders, or a willingness to scramble down rock faces. The gold is still there, in diminished quantities, and small-time prospectors still work the gravels today.

The Oxenbridge brothers - Bert and Ned, along with their nephew Victor - arrived from Australia with a plan that was either visionary or delusional, depending on whom you asked. They would bore a 170-metre tunnel through the solid rock bluff at Arthurs Point, divert the Shotover River through it, and mine the gold from the exposed riverbed. The tunnel was completed. A dam was built to back the water through it. The day after the dam was finished, a flood swept it away. Even when the diversion partially worked, a calculation error meant the tunnel sat too high to fully drain the river. And when sections of the riverbed were finally exposed, little gold was found. The scheme was abandoned, leaving behind a Category II Historic Place that today serves as a passage for rafters and kayakers rather than a monument to engineering triumph. The Department of Conservation maintains a walking track from the Edith Cavell Bridge along the river to the tunnel - a pleasant stroll through the wreckage of someone else's ambition.

The Shotover's second life began when the gold ran thin and tourism filled the gap. Queenstown reinvented itself as an adventure capital, and the river that had once attracted prospectors now attracted thrill-seekers. Commercial jet boat operators send their vessels screaming through the narrow canyon at high speed, executing 360-degree spins just metres from the rock walls - a quintessentially New Zealand experience invented by the same Bill Hamilton who built the first ski lift at nearby Coronet Peak. White water rafting companies run the rapids, and a canyon swing site near Arthurs Point offers the chance to leap into the void above the river. The old lower Shotover bridge, built in 1915 on tall concrete piers and stretching 172.5 metres across the river, was replaced for vehicle traffic in 1975 but restored in 2004 as part of the Queenstown Trail cycling and walking network. Much of the land upstream from Arthurs Point is now privately owned by Robert Lange, the former husband of singer Shania Twain - a detail that amuses locals and bewilders visitors in roughly equal measure.

The Shotover's cold-weather extremes are as dramatic as its rapids. In July 1991, the river froze bank to bank near Skippers Canyon - a solid sheet of ice spanning a river that normally churns with enough force to flip a raft. It froze again in June 1992. In July 2007, car-tyre-sized blocks of ice came floating down the channel and disrupted the jet boat and rafting operations that depend on the river being liquid and navigable. In 2012, large stretches froze solid once more after a sustained cold snap. These events are reminders that the Shotover, for all its commercial reinvention, remains a river governed by the Southern Alps' weather rather than by the tourism schedules of Queenstown. The same glacial origins that give the water its pale jade color also mean that when winter bites hard enough, the river simply stops moving. It is a landscape that does not negotiate.