Child friendly rating: 5 stars

Distance: Hut is right on waters edge - around 2km to paddle (or boat)

Signposted time: n/a

Bookings Required? Yes

Suitable in Winter? Not entirely for kids unless you have own motorised boat instead of kayak.

Camping Available? Yes plenty

4wd required? No

Parking:

The Lake Face Creek Boatramp is the closest launching point for boats & kayaks.

The Track:

The paddle to this hut is really easy in good conditions. With only really one of us paddling at a time, we easily made it within 20 minutes. However the hut book also describes days when the waves were 4m high in a storm! So you need to check windy.com and ensure that your gust levels on the way there, and on the way back are under 30km/hr, ideally under 20km/hr. This is the limit we personally use.

Hut:

The hut has platform bunks. It is dated, but we didn't have any mouse issues. I'm just not sure how happily I'd let a baby crawl around with how much there is to get into that doesn't look super clean.

From the hut there is some lovely tracks around the island that are worth exploring. Some get quite overgrown, but with no heavy pack on, you'll be able to carry little kids through it.

Book through the QLDC, but then access is free. If you don't have time to book, just take a tent as there's plenty camping space too. When we went, the system wouldn't let us book that night as someone had just checked out that morning, so we couldn't book the same day in the system. We just showed up and had the tent with incase, but it ended up fine and we could sleep in the hut as we had the island to ourselves.

Recommendations:

This is an amazing adventure near Queenstown - the easy kayak access makes it an awesome option for doing something different! Especially in summertime when there is also fantastic swimming in the lake.

Great for all ages, just if you've got extra little kids then obviously someone will have to be holding the toddler in the kayak / packraft to make sure they don't dive face first into the water, so you'll need a double rather than lots of single kayaks / packraft.

It's definitely an interesting escape from the hustle and bustle of Queenstown itself.