About
About this guide
Picton NZ is an independent guide to Picton (Waitohi) and the Marlborough Sounds for people arriving, passing through or staying.
Photo: Krzysztof Golik / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Published
Who runs it
The site is run by David Rowell, Website Owner / Editor. It is independent: it is not run by, or affiliated with, the ferry companies, any tour operator, the Department of Conservation, Marlborough District Council, Destination Marlborough or Port Marlborough. No one pays to be listed or mentioned.
What it covers
Getting to Picton and around it, things to do, walking tracks, the Sounds, plans for the time you have, and where to stay. Food gets a short overview here; the detail is on two sister sites (below).
How it is researched
Every factual claim is taken from a named source, usually the official one: the council for track distances, grades, parking and buses; DOC for the Queen Charlotte Track and campsites; the ferry companies, KiwiRail and InterCity for travel; Port Marlborough for the port and cruise ships; and each operator’s own website for what it offers. Each place page lists its sources and the date they were last checked. Where two sources disagree we say so rather than pick one, and where we could not confirm something the page says “not confirmed” instead of guessing.
Things that change often — timetables, fares, opening hours, road conditions — are linked to the official live page rather than copied, and anything volatile that we do quote carries the date we checked it. Most place pages were re-checked on 29 September 2026; each one says the date its facts were checked, and a few (mostly bays and roads out in the Sounds) still carry an earlier one. The editorial policy explains the rules in more detail.
Photographs
Every photograph is an openly licensed image from Wikimedia Commons, credited beside the image and listed with its licence and a link to the original on the sources page. Captions describe only what the picture shows.
Sister sites
Two related sites, run by the same editor, cover food: pictonrestaurants.co.nz is a searchable directory of every cafe, restaurant and takeaway with hours, and pictonfood.co.nz has editorial guides about what to eat and when. They share one venue data file, so a correction made once reaches all three.
Get in touch
Email contact@pictonnz.co.nz, use the contact form, or report something wrong.