Te Anau Glowworm Caves
$61.00 – $71.00
The caves that gave Te Anau its name were rediscovered by Wilson Cameron Campbell and his friend Lawson Burrows. Bedazzled with glowworms, they became one of the town’s greatest tourist attractions.
In 1947 the two men started Fiordland Travels, transporting visitors to the Hidden Lakes.
Campbell and Burrows wondered about the meaning of ‘Te Anau’. They thought that it could be a corruption of the Maori “Te Ana-au”, meaning a cave with swirling water.
In 1948 Burrows found a stream (now called the Tunnel Burn) flowing out of a cave in the Murchison Mountains. Inside, a waterfall poured over a vertical cliff, above which a large grotto was illuminated by millions of glowworms.
Following the discovery of the caves, Fiordland Travels continued to prosper until in 1965 when it became Real Journeys, now RealNZ, the largest family-owned travel company in New Zealand.
