For sale: lakefront property, private fishing and skiing

DREAMING of escaping the ratrace?

Then Halfway Bay Station could be for you, with its lakefront land nestled among Queenstown’s snowcapped mountains and giving access to world class flyfishing and heliskiing.

Yet, before you reach for your chequebook, you might need to try winning one or maybe three Lotto grand jackpots.

Selling agent Sotheby’s International Realty was expecting buyers to put up offers of more than $50 million for the high country farm.

The farm comes with 18,000ha of pastoral lease, including its own towering mountains, four separate valleys and 7km of shorefront land on the southern arm of Lake Wakatipu.

Twentythree kilometres of the Lochy River — a worldrenowned flyfishery flowing with rainbow trout — also passes through the station.

It even has its own hydroelectric system generating power from a river for the farm.

What it does not have, however, is road access.

The only way on to the farm is by a nineminute helicopter ride from Queenstown airport or by boat across Lake Wakatipu.

The farm would most likely be snapped up as a hidden retreat for a wealthy New Zealand citizen or resident or syndicate of buyers, Sotheby agent Matt Finnigan said.

Mr Finnigan said it was probably one of the most impressive high country farms near Queenstown to go on sale publicly in the past 2030 years.

The station’s present owners bought the farm 40 years ago and

— as with other high country farms snapped up by wealthy buyers — they continued to run sheep and cattle on the farm.

The property does not have a grand mansion on it.

Its present owners instead built a more humble ‘‘Owner’s Cottage’’, while all the station’s other buildings — including a woolshed and manager’s house — were related to farming. — The New Zealand Herald