Mountain Scene
By TRACEY ROXBURGH
Punters to this year’s Luma event won’t have to worry about carparking.
In a first for Luma, a park-and-ride’s being set up at Queenstown Central, where people can also fill up on meal deals kids can eat for free at all Queenstown Central eateries from 4pm over Queen’s Birthday weekend and then hop on free buses, operating from 5pm to 10pm for the duration of the event, which will take them directly to the Queenstown Gardens.
Luma chair Duncan Forsyth says feedback from previous years addressed transport options available to visitors, and while the Gardens is the ‘‘ideal location’’, State Highway 6 is a ‘‘notorious bottleneck’’.
Mountain Scene
By GUY WILLIAMS
When Brent and Paula Te Kawa put out the feelers for a Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) instructor for their new Queenstown academy, they got a flood of high-calibre applicants from overseas.
So they were surprised when the strongest application came from Matamata, of all places.
Rodrigo Teixeira, who arrived in the resort last week to take up the role at Te Manawa Jiu Jitsu Academy, is a fifth-degree black belt.
That makes him the highest-graded exponent of the martial art in the country.
‘‘It’s similar to having the likes of Michael Jordan teach you if you were into basketball,’’ Brent says.
Mountain Scene
January 29, 2021
By TRACEY ROXBURGH
Closed borders are providing an extra boost for next month’s Twilight Opera, the stage for which is a recently-designated ‘garden of national interest’ at Dalefield.
Produced by the Arrowtown Creative Arts Society (ACAS), with Auckland’s Opera Studio, it’ll be the second event of its kind held at Bruce and Margot Robinson’s ‘Birchwood Garden’, at Birchwood Road.
Five of the seven names now signed on for the February 21 concert should be on contract overseas, singing with American and European companies, were it not for Covid.
Following on from last year’s operatic coup, which saw ACAS secure leading opera tenor Simon O’Neill to perform at Arrowtown’s Athenaeum Hall a sold-out performance regarded as one of the best staged in the historic hall the society’s now doubled down.
Mountain Scene
By PHILIP CHANDLER
With Covid decimating Queenstown’s high-profile tourism industry, you mightn’t think a local business broker would be going for broke.
But for Arrowtowner Kevin Peterson, who’s been Tabak Business Sales’ Otago/Southland broker for the past five years, pickings have been good.
Buyer demand is in fact up, he says.
That’s from a combination of expats returning home, people who’ve lost their jobs and those who see very limited returns for money in the bank.
Some have thrown money into the sharemarket or housing but, he says, ‘‘strong businesses will ive you a hell of a lot better return than even houses, probably, because it’s more of a long-term thing’’.