Mountain Scene marks its coming of age with 12 months of 12 different community promotions costing $50,000 in cash and advertising. About $30,000 was raised for various good causes, over $12,000 of which went to a local nurse badly injured in a car accident – trustees bought her a $5000 motorised wheelchair and other funds went on special-needs therapy. An estimated 5,000 people went through the gates free at Queenstown’s biggest-ever air show, there was also a free five-hour concert by 16 local entertainers – and there was also the popular Queenstown Summit, hosted by celebrity Tim Shadbolt, who led a big community talkfest on where the resort was heading.

1994

• Then-QLDC boss Keith Grantham sues over an article about QLDC’s role in the development of Millbrook Resort. The case is settled out of court three years later.
• Mountain Scene’s then-publisher Frank Marvin becomes the first reporter in NZ to face criminal charges involving the use of a telephone, following late-night calls after the first in a spate of rafting deaths on the Shotover River. Top Christchurch barrister Pip Hall is retained to defend the charges, one of which is thrown out by the judge part-way through the two-day trial. Marvin is discharged without conviction on the other charge.

Offside with Sam
Film star Sam Neill in 1994 files a formal complaint with the Privacy Commissioner after Mountain Scene features his home in a Wonderhomes of the Wakatipu series. Pictures of a selection of luxury homes for the 15-week series were taken from a helicopter at not less than 1,000ft and specific addresses of the properties were not revealed.

A lawyer acting for the star of Jurassic Park, Hunt for Red October and The Piano says: "Our client is a private person who appreciates the privacy afforded by his hilltop home at Dalefield. He regards [the photograph] as a gross interference with his privacy and his right to privacy.

"We submit the publication has caused detriment and damage to our client, his interests and rights have been adversely affected and the publication has resulted in significant injury to the feelings of our client."

Mountain Scene’s lawyer successfully argues that the Wonderhomes series falls "within the definition of ‘news activity’" and is therefore exempt from the Privacy Act – the Privacy Commissioner agrees and throws out the Neill complaint.

Advising the paper of its victory, then-commissioner Bruce Slane says: "I am of course conscious of the tension which sometimes exists between an individual’s expectation of privacy and society’s interest (in both senses of the word) in the ability of the media to report and comment with the minimum restriction.

"This case presents a rather novel illustration of that tension."

The Neill complaint against Mountain Scene made national headlines in all major media throughout NZ, with reporters also calling from overseas.

1995

• Then-Queenstown Lakes District Council boss Keith Grantham imposes a ban on normal interviews with Mountain Scene. The ban lasts six months and is only lifted after the intervention of then-Chief Ombudsman Sir Brian Elwood, who brokers an unwieldy interview "protocol" between the parties.
  North & South magazine picks up on Mountain Scene’s enduring campaign on rafting safety in Queenstown with an indepth cover story called White Water Death, drawing extensively from interviews and background provided by the paper’s reporters.
• Journalism doyen Brian Priestley picks Mountain Scene for second place in the Community Newspaper Association’s Best All Round Newspaper contest, saying: "It is lively, outspoken, abrasive, well-written. Mountain Scene is obviously dedicated to and intensely interested in its community."
• Mountain Scene is the only community paper to appear in a ‘Top 10 NZ Newspapers’ list compiled by Metro editor Warwick Roger. He labels the paper: "The country’s best small-town battler." The paper takes top prize in the NZ Community Newspapers Association contest for Best All-Round Newspaper.