A Celebration of Fifty Years 2012: On to Queenstown

Overlooking the Queenstown area

Thursday we arrived in Queenstown, a funky little town, where we stayed at the Sofitel. We were greeted with a hearty Bonjour when we entered, a nod to the French origins of the Sofitel group. It struck an odd chord after days of “G’day mates!” The evening was at leisure and Tom and I walked into the town and then later ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. Since it was Halloween, the town was full of revelers in full regalia just like in the states. Queenstown is a town of young people, mostly backpackers and hostelers and they were having a city-wide party.

A word about the possums: New Zealand is overrun with possums, stoats and hares, among other pesky little creatures, as I think I mentioned before, but the possums are the most interesting. Throughout New Zealand, one can buy MerinoMink, a brand name for a soft and warm sweater material which is made from merino wool and possum fur. The combination of the two is much more luxurious than merino wool alone. The sweaters are pretty expensive but the colors are very nice—because of the possums I’ve been told—and they are supposed to last forever and not pill or lose shape. I ended up buying a MerinoMink zippered vest, which I have already worn almost every day. Isn’t this a creative way to dispose of an animal that is not only infesting the country and destroying the vegetation but can carry tuberculosis which can infect the sheep herds as well. The New Zealanders call them “squash’ems” and have no love for them at all. There are seventy million of the critters in New Zealand—more than twice as many possums as sheep. It takes sixteen possums to produce a kilo of possum fur, so I guess this is why the sweaters are so expensive.

But back to Queenstown. This is Lord of the Rings country. I’m the only living human that has never seen a Lord of the Rings movie, so I had trouble relating to the hushed tones and reverence accorded to Peter Jackson, the Kiwi writer/producer/director of the films, and the stars who invaded Queenstown with their huge entourages during the filming, much to the delight of the locals. The next morning our guide picked us up at the hotel and drove us around the area where the movies were made pointing out where the Battle of the Elephants was filmed and how Jackson insisted that the mechanical elephants be three times the normal size of an elephant. Forgive me if I have muddled up the facts here.

We were supposed to go by jetboat on the Dart River, a trip which even in good weather sounded a bit adventurous for my taste, but the weather was not good, and so the jetboat excursion was scrapped and we went instead to the charming old gold mining town of Arrowtown (where I purchased my possum vest) and then to a beautiful stucco winery called Chard Farms where we sipped yet another variety of Pinots Gris et Noir and reveled in the gorgeous countryside. If I make it sound as if we had terrible weather, we did not, and this was the first day the weather cramped our style ever so slightly causing a change of plans. But by the time we reached the winery the sun was shining and I for one was delighted with the improvised schedule. Our garrulous guide, Malcolm, gave us a running commentary on the gold rush in the area, which paralleled the gold rush in California and told us that when he moved to the Arrowtown area there were only two young ladies of marriageable age. He chose one of them believing that he was marrying into a gold family only to discover after the fact that he had to go into the hills and collect the gold himself. But they’ve been married happily for 37 years so all turned out well.