Not on our watch
- Honouring Queenstown’s little battlers
They may have been dubbed “little old ladies in tennis shoes”, but without them and their band of environmentalist supporters Queenstown would not have its beautiful downtown Gardens reserve preserved as it is today.
In 1968 the Mount Cook Company reportedly wanted to build a flashy, 10-storey tourist hotel encroaching onto Crown land adjoining the treasured Queenstown Gardens (Park Street Reserve). The Queenstown Borough Council had turned down its plans for a multi-storey hotel on the Eichardt’s site. Mount Cook failed in its bid, then in the 1980s the government-owned Tourist Hotel Corporation (THC) had a go, and also tried and failed to secure what is now the Park Street Reserve for a flash new hotel.
Three wee senior ladies, Margaret Templeton, affectionately known as ‘Mrs T’, Ailsa Smeaton and Marygold Miller, together with other Wakatipu environmentalists, wouldn’t have a bar of either plan and courageously stood up to the ‘suits’ from the city.
They then became part of the local ‘Guardians of the Reserve’, headed up in the mid-80s by Greg Thompson. Greg says he “saw red” when the then Queenstown Borough Council granted permission to THC to build part of its hotel on the treasured Park Street Reserve at the town end of Queenstown Gardens. “THC, as a Crown entity, was empowered by the government to build hotels outside of tourist centres under new legislation so they leapt onto that site,” says Greg. “They were going to build a great big monstrosity that went across Horne Creek onto Park Street Reserve.” THC was legally permitted to build on Crown land like reserves and national parks, he says. Other supporters like Neil Clayton, Bill Taylor and Irenie Adamson, backed the charge, joining the three feisty little women, who’d become renowned as ‘local environmental watchdogs’.
They held a public day with a petition, marking on the reserve trees how high the hotel building would reach – 10 to 12 storeys staggered into the hillside, recalls Greg. “Somebody skimmed up a pine tree and strung a red banner there showing how high the buildings would be,” says Greg. “People wandered into the park and once they saw that said, “Show me where to sign!”
The Guardians then appealed the council decision to grant use of the reserve to THC before the Planning Tribunal (now Environment Court), and won. “I received a phone call out of the blue from a Nelson lawyer I didn’t know offering his services for free - Jon Jackson, who later went on to become a respected Environment Court judge,” says Greg.
THC then submitted a revised plan not encroaching onto the reserve, which drew more flak from the locals because of its “Disney-like” coloured trellises, on what’s now the Novotel Queenstown Lakeside site.
So the Guardians - now Friends of the Gardens, lived up to their name with ‘three little old ladies in tennis shoes’ leading the charge. This was only one of many environmental battles for this courageous trio, trailing newspaper public notices and taking on many battles with bureaucracy.
Theirs were the days of token environmental awareness and should the Green Party have been around back then ‘Mrs T’, Ailsa, or Marygold would’ve surely won the local seat.
While tiny in stature and voice, ‘Mrs T’ alone was a force to be reckoned with, attending almost every council meeting religiously for decades, reporting back to the local environmental community if she smelled a rat. “She’d call me at 10pm to brief me on the week’s issues for an hour or so,” says Karen Boulay, of Friends of the Gardens.
In a 1986 Mountain Scene profile ‘Mrs T’ says she and Ailsa fought for six years to stop the Mount Cook reserve proposal and had told the town clerk afterwards they’d “spilled their life blood there”.
Despite her battles she was always welcomed by the councillors and asked if she wanted to speak, and speak she did, but always in a nice, convincing way. ‘Mrs T’ pretty much had on demand speaking rights at council meetings and became highly respected through the decades for her tenacity and stepping up to the plate where others wouldn’t be game. Many a hotel height bid failed under ‘Mrs T’s watchful eye.
“I’ve been called a stirrer, a nutcase…but my battles aren’t nasty ones. I’m just a little old lady sitting here who believes in people’s land,” she said in that 1986 article.
Marygold, new to town in the 1960s, had quickly joined the local battles, fighting hard to save the Earnslaw from being sunk in Queenstown Bay and to save the historic stone library building, also serving on the local council.
As a Southland Times article says, these “little old ladies” were not about to stay home and bake scones and allow a then male-dominated bureaucracy to run amok in their “sleepy hollow”. They were clearly indignant there would be no corporate takeover on Crown land that had been decreed by Queen Victoria, and where Queenstown’s first businessman Bendix Hallenstein had planted trees - not on their watch.
The fact that Park Street Reserve still stands untouched is testament to this feisty little trio of battlers, and other local environmentalists who followed.
