Together, the Sutherlands built the first hotel in Milford Sound, to accommodate the growing number of walkers arriving there on what is now the Milford Track. After Donald died in 1919, Elizabeth sold the hotel to the government.
More and more walkers came, and tales of the region’s untouched beauty began to spread. British writer Rudyard Kipling visited it in the 1890s and declared Milford Sound ‘the eighth wonder of the world’.