The Milford Road

Thursday 12th Feb 2009

The 121km road to Milford Sound from Te Anau has earned World Heritage status for its beauty and scenic variety. This includes lush lakeside forest, rugged mountains, cascading alpine rivers and picturesque walks.

We left Te Anau mid-morning and although it was overcast at least it was a dry day for our road trip to the Milford Sound.

Our first stop along the State Highway 94 was at Mirror Lakes, a short 5-minute walk from the road across a boardwalk. On a calm day, beautiful reflections of the surrounding scenery are visible in the lakes but sadly, it was a tad breezy and as a result there were no reflections - the birdsong was lovely though and it made for a pleasant if brief stop en route.

The road then took us through a beautiful valley known as the Eglington Valley, the mountains rose high and mighty above us and pretty meadow flowers lined the route.

At Knobs Flat (honest!), we stopped for a rest break before continuing our onward journey. The surrounding scenery was impressive and dramatic - low cloud clung to the mountain peaks and the blue-green waters of Lake Gunn set amongst beech forest made for a very pretty distraction.

A short distance away, The Divide (the lowest East-West pass in the Southern Alps), marks the start of the Routeburn Track. We planned to complete the Key Summit walk which starts from this Track after our visit to Milford Sound.

Our journey continued through the very scenic Hollyford Valley and on to Monkey’s Creek where we had super views of the Upper Hollyford and Darren Mountains.

We stopped at several additional lookouts including Pop’s View and Kaka Creek for some photo opportunities, wonderful views of the mountains, river and waterfalls.

We arrived at Homer Tunnel (1200m long) and, as entry is controlled by traffic lights we had to wait for 10 minutes before continuing our journey - whilst we were waiting one of the cheeky Kea landed on our car and popped his head in through the open window!! They are well known for their curiosity and intelligence!!


On exiting the Homer Tunnel the road slopes very steeply downhill to the Milford side where there are spectacular views along the Cleddau Valley.

Our last stop off we made was at The Chasm - the Cleddau River plunges through a narrow chasm 22m deep at the Upper Fall - there were a series of unusual rock formations which have been made by the water and winds sculpting the rocks which looked almost skeletal-like.