She calls herself a recluse these days, but established Arrowtown artist and award-winning photographer Mitch Watchorn was a ‘‘wild’’ adventurer in Queenstown in the ’90s. She talks to PHILIP CHANDLER about her early days here and what she’s morphed into more recently
Sinc Mitch Watchorn arrived in Queenstown in 1990 — fittingly, on one of New Zealand’s early mountain bikes — you could almost divide her life into two.
For her first 10 years, between bar work, bungy photography/videography and graphic design, she was the resort’s best-known female adventure junkie.
Since ‘‘retiring’’, the now-Arrowtowner’s garnered an amazing reputation for her paintings and drawings.
Born in ’67, Watchorn grew up in the Bay of Plenty — ‘‘the whole of [the region] is like me, we’re super-friendly and we always just laugh and say ‘hello’ to strangers’’.
Educated at a Hawke’s Bay private school ‘for young ladies’, she recalls buying a Nikon FE off a Sydney photo journo when she was 16.
‘‘It was true love, Mitch and her camera were never parted.’’
She’d often be found in the school darkroom, developing her own black and white ‘slice of life’ photography.
Fourth in line in a family of very talented artists, she went to study art at Canterbury University, but didn’t like its emphasis on abstract art, so went skiing instead.
She also learnt to be a cocktail bar manager in Auckland, but was most inspired by watching The Leading Edge adventure film ‘‘which made anything seem possible’’.
When arriving in Queenstown with her cousin and then-boyfriend after a five-month bike journey from Picton, she intended staying 10 days.
However, she became ‘‘embroiled in the small magical community that was Queenstown then’’, and never left — except for two early winters
working at the Turoa Ski Lodge, where she also learnt to ski fast across Ruapehu’s glaciers.
Watchorn had bar jobs at, in turn, Chico’s, McNeills and Lone Star.
The latter sponsored her ‘wonder woman’ ski suit — ‘‘an oilskin onesie with long leather cowboy and Indian tassels across the back and arms’’.
The tassles would fly out the back as she zoomed around the skifield, taking big air.
‘‘It was during this time all sorts of stunt jobs came my way, anything from jumping off cliffs to roof-riding Range Rovers, riverboarding, downhill mountain biking, paragliding.’’
Big air ski jumping for a Korean skifield commercial ‘‘was the funniest one as the actual stunt lady chickened out’’.
As a female big air skier, ‘‘I was often not allowed to compete with the men even though I jumped bigger than most of them, but my fellow competitors would always encourage the organisers to let me jump one way or another’’.
‘‘My heart sings when I watch Zoi [Sadowski-Synnott] jump on the international circuit — the world is finally ready for kick-arse ladies.’’
From ’95 to 2000, as a photographer/videographer, she captured thousands of then-Pipeline Bungy jumpers, and fell in love with Skippers Canyon.
‘‘If the canyon could tell us the wild stories she had seen play out, Hollywood would be out of a job,’’ she wrote in an adventure travel article.
She also flew pioneer paragliders throughout NZ with her then-boyfriend, Rene Schwaller.
A life highlight came in 2001, when she competed in the World Heli Challenge extreme skiing comp.
After that, she ‘‘retired’’ from ‘‘all the stunts and extreme sporty stuff’’ to concentrate on artistic pursuits, becoming a recluse in the process.
For a time she had a graphic design business, Naturally Twisted, designing business logos and cards, including a colourful one for Peter Edmonds’ JDV restaurant — ‘‘his brief was, ‘sex in every mouthful’’’.
She continued photography — planning to unveil a photographic history to the public in the future — but she’s also become an acclaimed artist for both her fine charcoal and pencil work and paintings in all mediums.
‘‘I am influenced by Peter McIntyre and John Crump — I feel they’re the greatest NZ purists — and I’ve had a great deal of support from Queenstown artists all my life here.’’
For over five years, till a year ago, she shared an Arrowtown gallery with Graham Brinsley.
She’s also donated huge oil paintings for fundraisers — the latest for Hawke’s Bay flood relief.
