Clock on the Hill – Alexandra

Alexandra, Otago, New Zealand

Roadside giants

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Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Aug 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

Alexandra’s enormous illuminated hillside clock has watched over the Central Otago town since 1968 and is reached by a steep walking track from the river.

P
Parking
at the arrival point

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

No recommended arrival yet

We have not checked a recommended place to arrive or stop here yet.

This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Clock on the Hill – Alexandra

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

45.25605° S, 169.40307° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Alexandra does not have a clock tower. It has a clock on a hill, eleven metres across, lit at night, visible from most of the town.

It has kept time there since 1968. It was a Jaycee project – built and installed through many hours of voluntary work by a local service organisation, in the era when that was how a town got anything ambitious done. The mechanism has been upgraded several times since, and Central Otago's official visitor material is careful to note that it remains a reliable timekeeper rather than an ornament. It works.

That is the difference between this and almost everything else in the catalogue. A giant fruit is a representation of a fruit. This is an actual clock, at absurd scale, doing the job of a clock for a whole town at once. The joke and the function are the same thing.

Alexandra was established in 1862 during the Central Otago gold rush, where the Clutha Mata-au and Manuherikia rivers meet, and it sits in dry, rocky, schist country that has since become fruit and wine growing land. The hillside the clock is fixed to is characteristic of it: bare, steep and stony.

You can walk up. A short track leaves from near the river, passes alongside a vineyard at the foot of the hill, and then climbs steeply over rough and uneven ground to the foot of the clock. It is genuinely steep rather than nominally steep, and the reward is standing underneath an eleven-metre working clock face with the town laid out below it.

PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

Central Otago’s official visitor site confirms the clock has served Alexandra since 1968 and measures 11 metres across. It remains one of the town’s defining landmarks and is accessible by a short walking track.

ACCESS

The hillside clock is reached by a steep walking track from the township. Exact recommended trailhead/parking arrival remains to be separately verified.

COMMUNITY