Fraser Skinner - Events man

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.

All of these would become iconic events – winter highlights, two of which Fraser founded and ran.

Flagging an Otago University law degree to pursue a penchant for piste, Dunedin-raised Fraser arrived in Queenstown in 1971 working by night and playing by day as he studied for his ski instructor’s exams.

“I’d worked here during my uni holidays then Packer’s Arms co-owner Alastair Watson offered me a job as barbecue chef,” he says.

Fraser skied until 4pm, working his way up to maître d’-cum-bartender-cum-waiter, greeting wealthy American tourists as they arrived at the door.

“Our American bartender Dave Cooper was in NZ illegally. He gave me his special cocktail recipe for a Bacardi contest and we got third.” Fraser then adapted the recipe, entered it in the NZ Bartender of the Year Awards, with Dave’s blessing, and won a trip to the UK.

Summers were also spent working for Dale Gardiner at Dane’s Safaris.

“We’d take zebra-striped Land Rovers up the Skippers-Branches Road, boiling the billy, gold panning and sightseeing,” Fraser says. Dale began rafting trips bringing in American boatman Larry Jacobson to train his guides.

Other summers Fraser headed overseas to ski, later as part of the first NZ Demo Ski Team.

Ex-Swiss B Team skier Werner Hanni from Coronet Peak gathered an informal NZ team of ski racers for a European ski camp, inviting Fraser to join the team.

That led to some ski racing success and ultimately top placings at NZ Masters races, including a national win at Cardrona.

While working his way up to examiner through the ski instructor’s ranks Fraser founded the popular Winter Classic – a weekly fun ski race series for locals between businesses. “I walked around the motels seeking sponsors who provided baguettes, cheese and wine.”

People took time off work to compete. “That first year we had a huge party with Kipa Royal and his band just below halfway.”

In the late 70s Fraser and key local tourism leaders like Bill Tapley, Clive Geddes and Trevor Gamble took over the Winter Festival from founder Peter Doyle. Fraser recalls that first ever Drag Race. “We set up in Earnslaw Park, me commentating, then played a sound tape of cars revving and people thought it was a car race. A stretch limo pulled up at the park with that first fishnet stocking-clad leg appearing and the crowd erupted.” It was the beginning of a 10-year association with the festival.

By the late 1970s Fraser was co-Ski School director with legendary American ‘Weems’ Westfeldt, then in 1980 he was invited, with Geoff Hunt, by Ironman King Robin Judkins to race in the Alpine Ironman, the foundation of the Coast to Coast.

Around that time Fraser and friends teamed up with helicopter legend Don Spary forming Alpine Heliskiing before Fraser ran Skyline Restaurant, then became Skyline marketing manager. John Darby then invited him to run Jagwar Holdings’ Queenstown operations in 1986. “They built Holiday Inn and Contiki Lodge. That was going to be my big break managing for them around the South Island then the 1987 sharemarket crash happened, and their parent company blew apart.”

Fraser took over Southern Lakes Heliski from the company and then in 1995 became director of the then Queenstown Promotion Board, which he’d helped establish in the mid-1980s.

He was among big local tourism players who’d combined forming the Queenstown Top 5 marketing group. “We did a lot of promotional trips. Walter Peak Tours’ Clive (Geddes) and I were being interviewed in a Hobart radio studio when the announcer turned to Clive and said, ‘Now, Mr Peak, or can I call you, Walter?’” Fraser chuckles.

The 90s were Fraser’s highlight years, co-founding the highly visible 50K of Coronet international ski race fundraising event for NZ’s Cure Kids with Wayne Café, Jeff Turner and Graham Smolenski. They’d seen similar success taking a NZ team to Aspen’s 24-hour downhill race.

“Wayne was the driver.”

It became the Compaq 50K and over five years raised $1m, ski racers arriving from as far as Norway, the money establishing the Chair of Paediatric Genetics at Otago University.

“Very brave kids suffering everything from cystic fibrosis to cancer had some special time away from their awful lives, matched with teams and treated like stars by Queenstown operators. That was a special time in my life.”

Fraser’s been heavily involved in the Wakatipu Ski Club, president for seven years during the construction of the new club hut on Coronet Peak on DOC land that Don Spary negotiated.

He’s sat on the NZ Ski Association and provided alpine racing commentary during the Winter Games.

Cricket is Fraser’s other passion, an Otago trustee on Vets Cricket NZ, a NZ Masters rep player also, and now patron of the Millbrook Cricket Club.

Mostly retired in Manapouri, Fraser now gives his time to a conservation trust protecting two kiwi-populated islands on Lake Manapouri and spending time with his daughters and grandchildren in Arrowtown.