My Life Story

Kirsten Dennison is one of those caring souls that you just want around in a crisis and one of those good sorts you want leading any fundraising charge. Yes, she’s pretty good with numbers but caring is just inherently who she is.

Carlyn Topp has served in multiple voluntary governance and community roles, at times juggling them all at once, while also managing two busy hospitality businesses and raising her kids.

While other teenage girls were preening themselves down at the local mall, Sharon Hargest was photographing Walter Peak high country farming life, skinny dipping in private bays and cooking for musterers – living the dream.

She’s launched three successful local food businesses and one of Central Otago’s most iconic fresh produce markets, her sticky buns still legendary years after she retired.

Tucked away in a renovated historic cottage in Arrowtown is an unassuming American Kiwi and former Santa Fe antique trader whose dad sold jewellery to Elvis Presley and western art to John Wayne.

Few people are representing their country in their chosen sport, let alone medalling multiple times, and still working fulltime at almost 80, but Queenstown’s Queen of Waka Ama Francie Piacun is definitely the exception.

One of Southand’s leading wool auctioneers and classers by his early 20s, it was that keen eye for an entrepreneurial opportunity that would initially land Derek Bulman, 85 next month, in Queenstown.

A multi-award-winning Kiwi architect in New Zealand and Fiji for 56 years, Murray Cockburn’s survived sharemarket crashes and coups, his unique rustic schist, timber style now iconic in Queenstown.

Her cousin is an internationally renowned Kiwi movie icon, and she’s been private nurse to wealthy British aristocracy, but you wouldn’t catch retired Queenstown nurse Lindsay Jackson skiting about all this.

It takes a bit to faze Mary May. The hardy 89-year-old, once a Scurr, was raised deep in the Cardrona Valley, no electricity until after she’d left home to work in Wānaka in 1956.

Arrowtown Fire Chief Murray Forward would pretty much do anything for his community. In almost 30 years in the volunteer brigade, much of that at the helm, Murray’s been on hand at countless community fundraising events, even dancing naked on-stage, all in aid of a good cause, fireman’s helmet appropriately positioned of course.

She’s been at the top of hotel management starting a 40-year career overseas at just 23, also at the helm in governance for tourism nationally and some leading Kiwi companies, all not bad for a girl from Mount Nicholas Station.

From highland dancing to the pipes for delighted tourists and flashing her frilly knickers to the cancan, to singing her heart out in a chorus, former seasoned Arrowtown performer Carolyn Crum is in her happy place on stage.

He may have arrived in the south having never seen ice but after 30 years here Niel Frear’s spent much of his time rink side at the helm while Queenstown’s produced some of New Zealand’s best Ice Blacks and the Southern Stampede’s soared to victory.

Lindsay Reid has never been one to get rattled, despite a teaching and principal’s career that spanned 33 years across Otago, even landing him temporarily on the Chatham Islands.

Destined to be a leader, he was appointed ‘Sergeant Major’ for his Greymouth High School Cadets in 1959 “in charge of training the kids”. By 2001, albeit on a somewhat grander scale, former Queenstown Lakes Mayor Clive Geddes was pretty much doing the same.

She’s breathed new life into Arrowtown’s ANZAC commemorations, flashed her frilly knickers during countless knee highs, and as an award-winning hair stylist Rosemary Chalmers has got it cut and dried.

One of New Zealand’s leading Queenstown skiers in the 1970s, Fraser Skinner soon discovered a niche for organising events, from his Winter Classic Ski Race and Winter Festival Mardi Gras to that first hairy, fishnet-clad stocking emerging from the stretch limo in the inaugural 70’s Drag Race.

City-raised Gloria McKeich arrived in Queenstown in 1967 – a young mum with a two-year-old and a baby, to discover “one doctor, one hospital, one newspaper outlet and no public transport”.

He’s rubbed shoulders internationally with horse racing greats, shouted the head of the CIA and FBI a few late-night quiets in his upmarket Arthur’s Point restaurant, even harboured undercover hobbits with hairy feet while hosting a private Peter Jackson unveiling.