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A weird and wonderful roadside attraction
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Hannah Whittaker

The Cardrona Bra Fence, or Bradrona, is one of the most random and hilarious roadside attractions you’ll find in New Zealand. Sitting in the Crown Range, about an hour from Queenstown or 35 minutes from Wānaka, it’s a fence absolutely covered in bras, and yes, it’s exactly as it sounds.

The legend of Bradrona

No one really knows how this started, but legend has it that sometime between Christmas 1998 and New Year's 1999, four bras mysteriously appeared on a fence, most likely after their owners had a wild night at the Cardrona Hotel.

Clearly, this created some revolutionary "cultural shift", and women (some locals, some tourists) kept adding more bras. By October 2000, there were already around 200 flapping in the wind.

As you can expect, not everyone was a fan of this unique display. In 2006, when the fence was found to be on public land, the local council ordered all 1,500 bras to be removed, calling it a traffic hazard (which, to be fair, makes sense. Imagine explaining to your insurance company that you crashed your car because you were staring at a fence full of lingerie.

But every time the bras disappeared, more would appear. This continued for nearly a decade until, in 2014, the fence was officially relocated down the road, near the Cardrona Distillery and the Horse Trekking & Quad Biking access road.

The bra fence was rebranded as "Bradrona," complete with a bright pink sign and a statue by local sculptor Liz Hall. There is also a donation box, raising money for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation, which has raised over $180,000.

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