Yes, and the centre of the galaxy is visible from the Southern Hemisphere for part of the year, so that the Milky Way looks like the textbook illustration of a spiral galaxy, a sort of poached egg with a fat yolk-like middle, which is really something. (as well as bubble tea). You catch a glimpse of the 'yolk in the middle' at 0:51 in the video.

Of course it has to be a really dark night in an out-of-the-way place for the galactic centre to become obvious to the naked eye. I was surprised to hear that Tekapo's got the best dark sky to boot, probably because it gets a constant flow of clean mountain air from across the Southern Alps, cleansed of salt spray and blowing away the desert dust.

Not surprisingly, this area has huge solar power potential also (in the daytime, of course =). I live a bit to the south in Queenstown, and always appreciate passing through on the way to the bright lights of Christchurch.