Arno Gasteiger

Boomtown

A salvo of fireworks opens the Winter Festival in Queenstown, now a key event in the calendar of the rapidly evolving town. It became a centre of trade after gold was discovered in the Arrow River in 1862, and though the commodity might have changed, entrepreneurs and developers are still striking it rich following a new seam of high-value tourism.

Written by       Photographed by Arno Gasteiger

The Winter Festival culminates in a Rio-style Mardi Gras and ball, with enormous masks made by artists Donna Demente and Jeff Mitchell. It’s symbolic not just of the carnival atmosphere pervading the town during this event, but also a resurgence in the arts and architectural identity of Queenstown.
The Winter Festival culminates in a Rio-style Mardi Gras and ball, with enormous masks made by artists Donna Demente and Jeff Mitchell. It’s symbolic not just of the carnival atmosphere pervading the town during this event, but also a resurgence in the arts and architectural identity of Queenstown.
An outdoor skating rink, assembled on Queenstown’s Village Green, was a focus of the 2011 Winter Festival. Brought in from the United States, the 15 sqm rink was filled with 20,000 litres of water, frozen over three days and bedecked with fairy lights and neon to bring a sense of winter to a town unseasonably starved of snow.
An outdoor skating rink, assembled on Queenstown’s Village Green, was a focus of the 2011 Winter Festival. Brought in from the United States, the 15 sqm rink was filled with 20,000 litres of water, frozen over three days and bedecked with fairy lights and neon to bring a sense of winter to a town unseasonably starved of snow.

After the clamour of downtown Queenstown, this is a different world. For an hour travelling by jetboat up the Dart River, I can almost imagine I am on some kind of serious expedition—with Hillary at the helm. But, strangely, as I penetrate new territory, the whole valley seems oddly and compellingly familiar.As though I have seen it all before.

A hot air balloon lifts off from the base of The Remarkables at first light. The spectacular range, which dominates almost every view from the town—topped by Double Cone (2324 m), at right—has been uplifted along a fault line and made steeper by glacial action. The valley to the left of the peak is the site of Queentown’s second ski area—known locally as ‘The Remarks’—considered a family alternative to Coronet Peak, from which this frame was shot.

Turns out this neck of the woods, with its ring of frosted ramparts, has featured in dozens of movies and commercials—from Sylvester Stallone’s Vertical Limit to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It even features on the label of Coors beer, because it does a better job of looking like the Rockies than the Rockies do.

It’s not easy to get away from the fact that Queenstown is now New Zealand’s third-largest film industry centre. Even the guides seem tired of the constant allusions to cinema. At one point, our skipper points to the opposite riverbank. “You know The Lord of the Rings? Well, over there, just by those trees, nothing at all happened. This river flat here has no connection with The Lord of the Rings. None whatsoever.”

Despite the hoopla, Queenstown has become a favourite corner of the country for me. Heading south from Auckland to escape winter may seem like jumping from the fridge into the ice-box, but the South Island—with central heating and compulsory serious clothing—actually seems warmer in winter than the north.

A hot air balloon lifts off from the base of The Remarkables at first light. The spectacular range, which dominates almost every view from the town—topped by Double Cone (2324 m), at right—has been uplifted along a fault line and made steeper by glacial action. The valley to the left of the peak is the site of Queentown’s second ski area—known locally as ‘The Remarks’—considered a family alternative to Coronet Peak, from which this frame was shot.
A hot air balloon lifts off from the base of The Remarkables at first light. The spectacular range, which dominates almost every view from the town—topped by Double Cone (2324 m), at right—has been uplifted along a fault line and made steeper by glacial action. The valley to the left of the peak is the site of Queentown’s second ski area—known locally as ‘The Remarks’—considered a family alternative to Coronet Peak, from which this frame was shot.

This time, I’ve come to cover the much-vaunted Queenstown Winter Festival. Out by the dock, waiting for the Prime Minister and fireworks, the town is in its element. In the cold, under the stars, snuggling together wide-eyed with wonder, little family groups are out to see the world. Babies, apple­cheeked in the freezing night air, are swaddled in woollen folds, smugly peering out at the world like preposterous little marsupial joeys.

Among the stalls, Queenstown’s Filipina Association is selling chicken adobo, right next to the Southern Lakes Deerstalkers Association, whose venison burgers help fund-raise for stoat control to save birdlife. Meanwhile, the snowboarding fraternity—a bunch of loose-limbed lads who can lope over hillsides while simultaneously texting or updating their Facebook status—are rubbing shoulders with fastidious foreign tourists.

An ice-skating rink has been set up, fringed by ice-blue blossom lights in the surrounding trees. As I sit having a coffee, a migration of multinationals sweep past my window, their faces appearing in the glass like schools of exotic fish in an aquarium. Everywhere, blazing braziers keep the citizenry warm. Folk have smiles on their faces, their eyes sparkling with frost and delight. This is New Zealand, come of age.

There is a range of buskers, but drawing the biggest crowds is Mullet Man—in a pair of cut-off overalls. For the benefit of the tourists, he explains deadpan, what a mullet haircut is. “You’ve heard of a stunned mullet; this is a stunning mullet! All business up front—but party out back. If you aren’t a Kiwi, I would just like to let you know $20 is the usual donation. If you are a Kiwi… shudd-up!”

A participant in the ‘Hundy 500’ (top) is interviewed following one of the Winter Festival’s more onerous events—running an obstacle course (including water features) in mid-winter wearing nothing but briefs. Seeking more comfortable climes (bottom), patrons gather in a warm corner at the Cowboy Bar, one of Queenstown’s many restaurants and bars sporting open fireplaces.
A participant in the ‘Hundy 500’ (top) is interviewed following one of the Winter Festival’s more onerous events—running an obstacle course (including water features) in mid-winter wearing nothing but briefs. Seeking more comfortable climes (bottom), patrons gather in a warm corner at the Cowboy Bar, one of Queenstown’s many restaurants and bars sporting open fireplaces.

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Two women are performing a purposely imperfect circus of slow motion cartwheels, balancing on chairs and derring-do with flaming firesticks, sequinned hot pants and lampshades on their heads—a beautiful and bravura act. It sets fire in the eyes of the adolescent girls watching on.

Though the Mardi Gras is sub-zero rather than sub-tropical, the parades include treasures such as goose-bumped maidens, clowns and volunteer firemen playing guitar, a grand clanking traction engine, steered with chains and rods steaming and puffing and clattering on the pavers. Goggle Eyes the cow, with nuggeted hooves and a beautifully brushed coat, shows a genuine interest in well-wishers in a gentle, drowsy manner.

There are platoons of children marching down the street. One little toddler has been inserted into a pointy cardboard box, his legs poking out the bottom, proudly trudging along impersonating the steamer Earnslaw, complete with a funnel-shaped hat and puff of cotton wool.

There is plenty happening in the 10 days of the festival—with flying-machine compe­titions off the wharf, relay races, dog-barking contests and jet-boat time-trials, where craft throb and roar around a slalom course like tailed-finned Cadillacs. Certainly, the race caller gets worked up: “Let’s see some 360 action,” she screams. “C’mon, put the hammer down, amp it up, do the Top Gun thing. I have never seen a dude whip a boat like this.” Meanwhile, the grand old dames of the lake—diesel launches with smooth kauri carvel hulls, sleek as swans—lie at anchor, jostled by the wash.

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The truth is, Queenstown is magical with or without a winter festival. The town embraces its waterfront like few other places in New Zealand. There is a chance to connect with the quiet beauty of the location and the cosmopolitan thrum of its little inner-city lanes, its icy sparkle. It has the ingredients of a civilised life—roaring fires, good red wine, world-class food, friendly high-energy people, sharp clean alpine air and starry nights. And a return trip from elsewhere in New Zealand—or Australia, for that matter—needn’t cost more than a few hundred dollars.

There are few better places to be on a freezing night than next to a log fire, warmed by a peppery shiraz, yabbering to some grand French dame who travels from Tahiti each year to “escape the heat” and dress up in elegant winter finery. So many of the women are togged up in stylish coats and gloves and hats with the swish of fur around the neck and the sparkle of diamonds. Some sport Joan Rivers jowls—whether numbed by the cold or by Botox, it is hard to tell. What other place in New Zealand attracts such chintzy aplomb?

Queenstown has definitely changed gear from the days when a top hotel proudly served me a baked potato with two plastic tubs of butter jammed into it. Now world-class lodges like the Azur cater for a different class of tourist, at $1000 a day. Even public institu­tions have a touch of gloss. Down on the water­front it looks as though the artist Christo has draped an abstract sculptural wall across the contours of the lakeside—but it turns out to be the Remarkables Primary School.

Like attempting to ice an enormous cake, the array of snow machines dusting Coronet Peak represent the largest snow-making facility in the southern hemisphere. Queenstown’s primary alpine field has been increasingly plagued by poor snowfall as temperatures warm. Hundreds of ski field employees were out of work during the 2011 season, as snow didn’t arrive until a week after the Winter Festival, and then in such quantity that the ski field remained closed for days.
Like attempting to ice an enormous cake, the array of snow machines dusting Coronet Peak represent the largest snow-making facility in the southern hemisphere. Queenstown’s primary alpine field has been increasingly plagued by poor snowfall as temperatures warm. Hundreds of ski field employees were out of work during the 2011 season, as snow didn’t arrive until a week after the Winter Festival, and then in such quantity that the ski field remained closed for days.

You enter it from the hillside, via a roof garden of alpine plants and boulders, down through steps of polished concrete with doors and office desks of satin-polished plywood. Contained within the curve of the building is the playground, but from the classrooms a series of floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows allows a filmstrip view of Lake Wakatipu. I half expect to see the children whizzing around on Segways.

But in a town where a banking-machine wall is faced with schist (complete with a gas log fire), fine design hardly seems out of place A vineyard winery is nothing more than a breathtaking falcon wing hovering over a paddock. A golf clubroom thrusts out of a hillside like a slab of raw rock. Even McDon­ald’s is faced with stone, its golden arches downsized.

It’s no accident that Queenstown has become a mecca for award-winning architec­ture and creative endeavour. It has been a slow revolution of small victories. Twenty years ago, a group of concerned citizens decided that Queenstown should stand for quality rather than kitsch. In the wake of runaway speculative development, members began standing for the council and attempting to influence the town’s course.

In an exchange in 2000, mayor Warren Cooper—who more than anyone epitomised the old way of doing things—referred to the group as “chardonnay socialists”, and told local vineyard owner, actor and campaigner Sam Neill to “stick to film-making”. Neill retorted that Cooper, formerly a painter, should “stick to house painting”. The fracas made headline news. (Five years later Neill later produced a ‘Socialist Chardonnay’ and sent a case to Cooper.)

Film and television producer Jeff Williams (top) was among a high-profile group that campaigned for the appropriate development of Queenstown’s rural landscape over the last 15 years. “We had to get rid of the colonial slash and burn mentality that pervaded the council,” he says, now counting the movement as largely successful. However, commercial development has necessarily followed the fortunes of the market—from boom, to bust. In Frankton, the Five Mile retail and apartment development failed in 2008 even before it got out of the ground. Since then, the concrete groundworks for the planned underground carpark (bottom) have been something of a monument to the development of this Arcadian landscape. The site has recently been purchased from the receivers and the project will continue, albeit in a different form.
Film and television producer Jeff Williams (top) was among a high-profile group that campaigned for the appropriate development of Queenstown’s rural landscape over the last 15 years. “We had to get rid of the colonial slash and burn mentality that pervaded the council,” he says, now counting the movement as largely successful. However, commercial development has necessarily followed the fortunes of the market—from boom, to bust. In Frankton, the Five Mile retail and apartment development failed in 2008 even before it got out of the ground. Since then, the concrete groundworks for the planned underground carpark (bottom) have been something of a monument to the development of this Arcadian landscape. The site has recently been purchased from the receivers and the project will continue, albeit in a different form.

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But more than a decade on from that conflict, the old guard is gone, replaced by a more sophisticated mentality to Queens­town’s rural development. Certainly, the stables at nouveau estates featuring wooden wheelbarrows propped, just so, against newly laid schist do have a certain ersatz self-consciousness. And there’s a hilarious number of gift-shop-grade art galleries—at one four-way intersection, all signposts lead to a gallery. But it’s better than the alternative.

Most of the large developments, those that may once have become crimes against the landscape, are getting it right. The new Hilton is like a city art gallery. Sir Michael Hill’s golf course near Arrowtown—The Hills, what else—is not a place where everybody gets a bargain. Membership runs at $10,000 a year, and non-members have to cough up $500 a round. But the entrance is so discreet I couldn’t find it. The award-winning clubrooms, a bulwark of raw concrete emerging from the earth with a tussock roof, are sprinkled with all kinds of playful touches. The course works with the topography, so it’s like hiking in the countryside rather than strolling through a city park. Apparently Hill himself scrubbed away at the rocky outcrops by hand to get them just right.

Now the DNA of this little dwelling—its raw log and schist fireplace—lives on just over the hill, in every hotel foyer, or banking machine nook. This is where it all began. Humble beginnings.

Hill is well regarded locally—not least because the golf course has preserved open space that is elsewhere under pressure from densely packed lifestyle developments. But there’s a long history of venerating the retailer here. Bendix Hallenstein was one of the first mayors. It was in Queenstown in 1864 that he opened his second store.

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Yet Queenstown still relies on the arrival of snow. Coronet Peak, bereft of snow during the festival, is a scene of desolation. Dozens of snow makers are perched like giant salon hair dryers awaiting customers on rocky and deserted ski runs. The only sound at the multimillion-dollar complex is the fluttering of flags stirred by the tepid breeze.

Back in town, the failure of the snow is beginning to hurt the hundreds of workers who have flocked here, ready to man the slopes. They’ve been waiting weeks, and ski-slope employers have started providing hot soup, but not wages. The Salvation Army has been particularly active in support.

High above the bright lights of Queenstown, an image of Julien Bourdeau stands at the pass to Skippers Canyon. The French-Canadian packer, store-keeper, publican, farmer and mailman made twice-weekly return trips between the goldfields and Queenstown with his packhorses for 50 years until his death, age 87, in 1916.
High above the bright lights of Queenstown, an image of Julien Bourdeau stands at the pass to Skippers Canyon. The French-Canadian packer, store-keeper, publican, farmer and mailman made twice-weekly return trips between the goldfields and Queenstown with his packhorses for 50 years until his death, age 87, in 1916.

“This is a rich man’s town, with rich man’s prices, but there’s an underlying poverty here,” says Catherine Lewis of the Salvation Army. “You can’t raise a family on those wages, or pay the power bill to keep them warm. But that’s not the employer’s problem, because another traveller is always there ready to take over.”

“There’s definitely a high attrition rate for families,” says John Osterloh, also a Sallie. “Employment here is mostly McJobs, mostly service work, and there are so many itinerant young workers here, if you don’t have skills or a job lined up we have to tell people to get back on the bus and return from whence they came.”

But coming to Queenstown in the hope of finding a fortune has never been easy—you only have to drive five minutes over the ridge into Skippers Canyon to learn that. It’s an almost impossible road, scraped by hand into the side of a cliff and built for pack horses more than cars. It’s crumbling-edged, sweaty-lipped, Indiana Jones territory, one of only two roads in the country where you can’t take a rental car. And it tells you something about the town’s beginnings.

Back in 1863, this valley was home to 2000 diggers who had flocked to the canyon chasing gold. There were banks and hotels, and as late as 1927, a school, now carefully restored. But the people, they all vanished with the gold.

Still sluicing in the canyon, gold-digger Dave McMann (top) is the last of this breed.
Still sluicing in the canyon, gold-digger Dave McMann (top) is the last of this breed.

Well, almost all. Smoke twists from the chimney of a little hut perched on the edge of a cliff. I poke around the shanty, knocking at the door, looking for signs of life. When finally I prise Dave McMann from his hideout, I gain a small glimpse of a life not many get to live these days. Years of prospecting in the Bolivian highlands, of working his claims in the Shotover. He’s had some success and has his needs met—a solar panel to charge his cellphone, a spectacular view from a bathroom which features what must be one of the world’s longest long-drops, and a helipad cut into the cliff right next to it.

And now the DNA of this little dwelling—its raw log and schist fireplace—lives on just over the hill, in every hotel foyer, or banking machine nook. This is where it all began. Humble beginnings.

High above the bright lights of Queenstown, an image of Julien Bourdeau (bottom right) stands at the pass to Skippers Canyon. The French-Canadian packer, store-keeper, publican, farmer and mailman made twice-weekly return trips between the goldfields and Queenstown with his packhorses for 50 years until his death, age 87, in 1916.

High above the bright lights of Queenstown, an image of Julien Bourdeau (bottom right) stands at the pass to Skippers Canyon. The French-Canadian packer, store-keeper, publican, farmer and mailman made twice-weekly return trips between the goldfields and Queenstown with his packhorses for 50 years until his death, age 87, in 1916.

I fly over this country the next day, tagging along on a helicopter tourist trip to the mountains. Soon the manicured valley out from Queenstown—dotted with McCha­teaus, each with a winking swimming pool— gives way abruptly to tussocky hill country ruptured by ravines. When we land, I watch as tourists stage a snow fight for their cameras beside the helicopter, busily videoing the experience.

Here among the peaks there is an Antarctic nothingness, just ice and the blue of the sky. But far below in one valley I spy a mustering hut. Here they still win a living from the land, pausing at day’s end for a brew. As they always have.

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