Otago Regional Council

By PHILIP CHANDLER Highly-respected Ngai Tahu elder Sir Tipene O’Regan says it’s time Queenstowners put an ‘h’ in ‘Wakatipu’. ‘Whakatipu’ is the undisputed traditional Maori spelling, however ‘Wakatipu’ has been employed since early European days and pops up in everything from...

By GUY WILLIAMS Queenstown's Tourism Workforce Alliance has reached the end of the road, with no immediate prospect of more work in the offing. Since June, the group involved about 50 tourism workers, who had lost their jobs or were on...

By PHILIP CHANDLER Otago Regional Council’s investigating a major sewage spill into Lake Wakatipu last Friday. It’s believed tens of thousands of litres of raw, untreated sewage poured into the lake after a bung ‘‘let go’’ in a pipeline above the Frankton...

LAST week I moved to Fernhill, and the walk from Mountain Scene HQ to my new home’s been a perfect reminder of why I left London. Long gone are the smelly, hot days of the tube and now, thankfully, so...

By TRACEY ROXBURGH While it could be a decade before a new two-lane bridge’s built at Arthurs Point, a group of transport and council boffins hope another bridge, just for cyclists and pedestrians, will be in place much sooner. The Way to...

By TRACEY ROXBURGH While Otago Regional Council’s started ‘‘flood resilience’’ work in Glenorchy, the town’s community association chair says there’s more to be done. ORC’s carrying out vegetation clearance and channel realignment to improve drainage from Lagoon Creek and the Rees...

By GUY WILLIAMS Jon Mitchell is that rare thing in Queenstown these days — a bona fide local. The Labour Party candidate for Southland was born in the former maternity hospital in Sydney Street, and spent his early childhood in an...

By MATTHEW MCKEW Plans to increase housing in Ladies Mile and Frankton by up to 4000 units rely on Kiwis ditching cars in favour of bus and ferry networks. That’s according to the growing list of consultant-produced and council-commissioned plans for...

By MATTHEW MCKEW A digger spotted dredging Shotover River in Queenstown's Tucker Beach area recently was removing silt to keep KJet boats from being grounded. The work, consented by Otago Regional Council, was carried out by KJet - owner Shaun Kelly...

By PHILIP CHANDLER Former local mayor Vanessa van Uden's been among more than 100 volunteers responding to Queenstown's biggest humanitarian crisis. She's part of City Hall's emergency operations centre response team, formed after the Covid-19 lockdown started late March. Every Tuesday and...

By TRACEY ROXBURGH A Glenorchy developer's forging ahead with plans to resurrect the town's same site as the original Mount Earnslaw Hotel once stood. Douglas Rikard-Bell applied for consent late last year after his company, Blackthorn Ltd, bought the vacant 8079 square...

By GUY WILLIAMS A consortium of predator control and conservation groups is working on an ambitious project to eradicate and intensively control predators across a massive swathe of country between Queenstown and Hawea. An independent study it commissioned concludes a 'Southern Lakes...