Four decades ago, a vessel unlike anything New Zealand had seen before made her maiden voyage across Lake Rotorua. Broad-beamed, two decks high, and stretching 32 metres from bow to stern, Lakeland Queen turned heads from the moment she touched the water. The sight of that great eight-bladed stern paddle churning slowly at her transom, propelling the vessel with an almost theatrical calm, stopped locals in their tracks. Nothing in the country looked remotely like her.
Built in Rotorua in 1986 and launched the following year, Lakeland Queen was a purpose-built Mississippi-style sternwheeler, powered by a 240-horsepower Cummins diesel that drove her paddle through a hydraulic system so smooth that passengers could easily forget the vessel was moving at all. From her very first season, she earned the kind of affectionate title that tends to stick: Rotorua's "Lady of the Lake."
The three decades that followed turned Lakeland Queen into something more than a tourist attraction. She wove herself into the fabric of the city. Tour groups filled her decks by day; wedding parties and anniversary dinners claimed her by night. At full capacity she could seat more than 200 guests across her two levels, served from her galley and bar. Skipper Melvyn Bowen, reflecting in 2017 on thirty years spent at her helm, spoke of the quiet pride that came with captaining the only sternwheeler passenger vessel in the country. She was also known at times as Te Ao Kapurangi, a name that recognised Rotorua's bicultural story and the place the vessel had earned within it.
Then Covid-19 arrived, and the borders closed, and the tourists stopped coming. By 2021, Lakeland Queen had been moved into dry dock at Sulphur Point. For a while there was a routine of care, engines turned over weekly, systems checked, the possibility of a return kept alive. But the infrastructure around her was quietly failing. A 2022 engineering report commissioned by the Rotorua District Council found the wharf piles to be "severely rotted" and the steel beams "severely corroded," rating the structure in "poor to unsatisfactory condition." By 2024, her operator had gone into liquidation. RNZ described it as "a sad day for Rotorua" as the "beautiful icon" sat idle and moulding ashore. To those who remembered her in her prime, it felt like the city had lost something irreplaceable.
The revival came from a direction few would have predicted. In 2024, Damon and Arna Hagaman purchased Lakeland Queen out of liquidation. Damon, son of Scenic Hotel founder Earl Hagaman, understood from the outset that buying the vessel was only the beginning of the challenge. The Rotorua Daily Post, reporting on 28 August 2025, revealed that over the year that followed the couple invested more than $2.5 million in restoration work, with a further million dollars still earmarked for galley and bar refits. The effort drew in contractors, volunteers, and some unexpected helpers along the way. Singer Howie Morrison Jnr set aside his microphone and picked up a paintbrush to assist with finishing work, before taking on a new role as entertainment manager aboard the restored vessel.
The mechanical work fell to Rotorua firm Sitewide Engineering, whose team stripped back and rebuilt the hydraulic systems, refurbished the paddle drive, overhauled the bow thruster, and restored the steering gear. Without that work, Lakeland Queen would never have moved under her own power again.
She did move again, though. On 28 August 2025, just after eight in the morning, Lakeland Queen eased back out onto Lake Rotorua. With finishing work still continuing at her jetty, commercial cruises are expected to resume late 2025, with dinner sailings, themed nights, and live entertainment all part of the planned programme. Rotorua's Lady of the Lake is, once more, afloat.
