Mel Stadler - From nursing stars to working bars

From a ‘beach baby’ growing up in Surfers Paradise to practice nurse for famous rock stars like Mick Jagger, Mel Stadler was perhaps the most unlikely contender for a 30-year Queenstown hospitality career.

One of Queenstown’s most successful and respected restaurant bar operators, Mel and husband Erich sold Surreal in Rees Street in August last year, almost 26 years after Mel bravely took on the business in 1997 at 28 with no financial backing.

“It was incredibly terrifying,” she recalls. On opening day, I owed over $250,000.” That night a young Australian on a Ski Express holiday died of a heart attack at the bar leaving Mel, who’d been frantically performing CPR until some doctors took over, wondering if this was a sign. “I thought, ‘It can’t get any worse than this,” she says.

“I was completely undercapitalised. The banks wouldn’t loan me any money or give me a business account, so I was paying suppliers with cheques,” she says. “I became the ‘Queen of Post-Dated Cheques’. I was on the bones of my arse. I’ve never known poverty like it.”

The GFC (Global Financial Crisis) hit after a year, then Queenstown’s notorious 1999 floods. However, Surreal escaped largely unscathed and every week trading became easier. “Fortunately, I had some amazing people supporting me and great staff who established their own clientele.”

One who takes ‘keeping busy’ to the extreme, Mel and Erich later also bought The Stables in Arrowtown. “It was a bit of a juggling act.”

It was all a far cry from the trajectory her life had been on when, as a freshly registered Gold Coast nurse Mel headed off on her OE to London.

Life until then had been a beach. “The beach was my Zen place. I was a little ‘skeg chick’,” she grins. She and her brother would drop their school bags and head off to the beach to surf unaccompanied as was the norm in the 70s. Surf Patrol was a ‘rite of passage’ for Surfers kids.

With her dad a local stage actor, Mel grew up backstage and was right into drama and music at her Catholic convent high school.

A two-week false uni start studying medical technology in Brisbane led to a gap year working, then back to Queensland University of Technology to do a Bachelor of Science in Nursing based at Princess Alexandra Hospital.

Mel then headed back for more, completing a business degree while nursing to support herself. “The day after I finished at 23, I was on the plane to London.”

Pizza Express was opening next door so while Mel was waiting for her UK nursing registration, she waitressed, after lying about her experience. She’d become assistant manager within a year and once the registration came through, she did put her business degree to work in feasibilities for the NHS.

A renowned doctor to the Royals and the stars then hired her as practice manager, quite an education for a young GC surf chick. Collected by chauffeur, the security measures blew her away. Patients included Mick Jagger, Mark Knopfler, Annie Lennox and the Royals. “I gave all the inoculations to the Jagger children.”

The doctor she worked with was the medical advisor for the Doc Martin TV series.

“We’d have sheikhs, and their wives fly in from Dubai and Saudi to have their medicals done with this amazing doctor.”

London also became her introduction to electronic music which ended up shaping her career at Surreal.

Mel saved and worked as a nurse and waitress, travelling the globe, including a ski season in Andorra where she worked at the Red Rock, eventually invited to work in Queenstown where they were opening. “I was like, ‘New Zealand! They come over to us!’.” She arrived at the bar at night. “I thought the Skyline Gondola was the skifield access lift, so I was incredibly disappointed,” she laughs. But the rest had her hooked. She worked her way up to general manager, also building a great rapport with the local cops, temporarily handcuffed to the bar after losing a bet that Aussie would beat NZ in the Bledisloe Cup. An Aussie player saved her in the last few minutes of the game.

Surreal was the next progression, taking over the Staircase Fashions site.

“I’d often go in early at 6am to set up after a big night working and make our wonderful cleaner Daryl a coffee. We were sitting chatting when this Irish regular comes stumbling down from the upstairs toilets and insists on taking over Daryl’s role, mopping the floor,” Mel laughs.

Mel’s served on the local Hospitality Association committee and District Licensing Committee and these days she’s giving back from that experience and knowledge as a volunteer business mentor coach. She’s also mentoring in her own business coaching business, after upskilling this past year and still keeps a hand in…. this time on the other side of the bar. “It’s still my local,” she grins.