Country Life: Stars on the farm in Lake Tekapo

Sam Blair is used to the chill of a winter night in Lake Tekapo. Standing in the cold is part of his job.

"Milky Way season runs May through 'til, like, October, for the world. For us in New Zealand, that's our winter.

"It's the longest and darkest nights, so not only is it the best time of year to look at the Milky Way... the Southern Hemisphere is the best part of the world to do it," he told Country Life.

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Lake Tekapo in the Mackenzie Basin enjoys particularly starry night skies, a result of both its climate and efforts in the town to reduce light pollution, which earned it a Dark Sky qualification in 2012.

The area makes for great stargazing, which is why Blair finds himself setting up telescopes on Balmoral Station, a high country farm less than 10 minutes from the township.

He runs guided tours of the skies through Silver River Stargazing, one arm of agritourism business Go Tekapo.

Stargazing is one piece of the farm-diversification puzzle for Go Tekapo, owned by Steve Berge.

It operates several agritourism experiences over Balmoral and Mt Hay Stations, merino and beef farms owned by the Simpson family.

The business began about 10 years ago.

"This wasn't strategically planned, it was more out of farming wasn't doing so well," Berge said. "We thought, 'How else can we make money from the land?'"

The family began with building tourist accommodation, and when that did well, ventured into farm experiences.

"Basically anything that we can do on farm, or close to farm, we'll have a crack at."

Horse-trekking, ATV rides, muster experiences and a petting zoo are amongt the attractions offered across the farms - all while they are actively farmed.

Berge said demand for the farm experiences has ramped up over the four years.

"There's a lot more tourists after Covid, and especially the Chinese market has grown substantially."

The stargazing tours are offered in Japanese and Mandarin, as well as English, to better serve the tourists booking them, he said.

"They say there are a million tourists a year in the South Island, and a lot of them come to Lake Tekapo for its scenic beauty.

"You look up at Lake Tekapo, and all you see is mountains; you don't see high rise buildings like you would in Switzerland, or a gondola going up a mountain."

The farms themselves run 10,000 merino sheep and 600 cattle.

Berge said farmers from other countries often attend the experiences to see whether they could start agritourism businesses on their own land.

"I think farming around the world, is pretty similar. I think the thing that strikes people here is that pure, scenic beauty."

"I've lived here for a long time, but you still look up at the stars and go 'wow'."