Australia

By GUY WILLIAMS Three long-time downtown Queenstown business owners say the next six months will determine the fate of many like them. One’s closing his restaurant for good, another says he’s staring at a ‘‘bloody long autumn’’, while the third predicts...

By TRACEY ROXBURGH A QUEENSTOWN travel agency’s done a Covid-induced pirouette, hoping to do its bit to help. While xtravel co-owner Victoria Keating says shifting to focus solely on repatriation flights may have started as a way to help the business...

By TRACEY ROXBURGH Queenstown's James Anstiss was within cooee of a coup in Australia last weekend. Anstiss roared home in the third round of the Victorian PGA Championship, at Moonah Links, to take a one-shot lead going into the final day,...

By PHILIP CHANDLER A long-time Queenstown hotelier fears the resort’s ‘‘facing a catastrophe’’ if the Aussie border remains closed. The Rees’ Mark Rose says: ‘‘Our business fell off a cliff on Sunday, and apart from a couple of reasonably good days...

By TRACEY ROXBURGH Covid-19's being described as Queenstown’s ‘‘economic earthquake’’. As one resort hotelier says occupancy’s falling off a cliff (click here), a major hotel’s about to mothball indefinitely (click here) and another CBD hospo business has temporarily shuts its doors (click...

By MATTHEW MCKEW It was a ride on a downtown Auckland bus that launched a journey of a lifetime, catapulting the line-up of Stellar* into the pop stratosphere. Andrew Maclaren still remembers that life-changing but modest trip. There was no limo, no...

By MATTHEW MCKEW When a letter was handed to a Wakatipu High schooler in the pouring rain at Branches Camp he had no idea what it was about. A moment later and Kane Viggers was elated — winning New Zealand On...

By PHILIP CHANDLER Queenstown's film community is gearing up for a busy February/March with two TV series being shot simultaneously in the region. First, the second series of TV crime thriller One Lane Bridge will again be shot around Queenstown, starting...

Darren Lovell’s ‘Your Word’ piece (MS, Nov 26) sure created a stir. Darren raised a valid concern about the future of our town, and indeed the wider district, if we don’t get any international visitors back soon. Some of the responses...

By PHILIP CHANDLER Coming on top of Covid border closures, some retailers fear an impending dig-up of Queenstown’s town centre could put them under. Council’s about to start a $60 million CBD street upgrade — a ‘shovel-ready’ project it’s co-funding with...

By GUY WILLIAMS Highly-regarded Bannockburn artist Alan Waters will ‘‘believe it when I see it’’ when 60 of his artworks go on the walls at Five Mile’s Queenstown Contemporary gallery on Saturday. Organised by Kate Blomfield, of Tantra Art, ‘A Retrospective...

By MATTHEW MCKEW Tearful selfies sent via text in the middle of the night reveal the heavy strain on an 11-year-old girl stranded in Aussie and missing her mum. It’s been almost a full year since Peggy Hieronymus held her daughter...