Our History

Rowing in the area can be traced back to 1908 and the first regatta, although it appears that the club wasn't formed until 1958.

(From a speech made by John Alexander at the Raising the Oar function for Eric Murray in 2019):

"In case anyone doesn’t know Jim Boult has been our patron quite some time. I came to Queenstown in 1985 and joined the RC. At that time the club was based in the bath house on Queenstown Bay. It had a long extension, for the boats with the bath house part being a changing room. To be fair it was a bit of a dump and was falling into disrepair and the Councillors of the day wanted us out. As it happened our president at that time was Bill Byers, who by coincidence was also the town clerk, the equivalent of today’s CEO. Anyway Bill came up with a plan for us to move to Lake Hayes and we picked out a spot for a shed. At that time we had few members and there were no community trusts in existence to help with funding a new building and things looked to be heading for the too hard basket. Then someone came up with the idea of asking this young, smart, up-and-coming business man, and fairly new arrival in town I believe, if he could help. So Bill asked me to join him on a visit to see Jim Boult. Jim was incredibly accommodating and by the end of our meeting we had, I recall, enough help to obtain the materials to build a new shed. It was duly built with mostly voluntary labour and forms the core of our present shed at Lake Hayes. As a reward for his generous donation Jim was asked to be our patron which he accepted. So that’s 34 years now Jim, amazing how time goes by and we really do appreciate your long association with the club and the fact that you have maintained an interest in our activities over that whole time.