Ray Drayton - From rag trade to restaurants

Now author of multiple fiction novels – one that almost made it to the big screen, Ray Drayton was once best known as Queenstown’s very own restaurant front-of-house, Fawlty Towers funnyman.

Part-owner with American chef Domenic Mondillo in the popular Roaring Meg’s Restaurant in Shotover Street during the 80s, Ray’s quick wit and humorous antics soon had him renowned as Queenstown’s very own, while more polished, Basil Fawlty.

A skilled tailor by trade, his light-hearted banter also landed him front of house in that role, fitting the rich and famous for suits in the most prestigious of gentlemanly establishments in London and Sydney.

Raised by his grandparents in Cambridge, he was directed into the industry by his grandfather.

“I’d always wanted to be a journalist at high school, but that never happened,” he says. “I worked for an old tailor in Cambridge after school unrolling bolts of cloth and circling moth holes with chalk.

“Several months into my fifth form year Dad (my grandfather) said the boss had offered me an apprenticeship and I was doing it,” Ray says.

From there he advanced to Hallensteins in Hamilton, tailoring senior-ranking Police and law enforcement uniforms, also doing some side gigs for the Army fitting tailor-made dress uniforms and special mess jackets for high-ranking officers.

It was excellent grounding for his job as a tailor-fitter at Austin Reeds in London’s upper-class Knightsbridge, Ray taking a fun five-and-a-half-week cruise to Italy on his OE at 24.

As shopfront fitter he was “looking pretty and shoving hands up inside trouser legs”, quite acceptable back then. It was the mid-70s and Ray’s long-haired hippy curls and jeans were quickly replaced with a suit and short back and sides.

“Bereft of money” on the way home via Perth, Ray and a mate walked across Nullabor Desert, hitching to Sydney where he scored “the best job in the rag trade”, staying six years before returning home to try something new. “I’d left a good job, and I just wanted to go skiing, so I chucked the suit in, bought an old van and headed to Queenstown.”

He opened a ski lodge on Frankton Road – Iti Kahurangi, nicknamed by local travel agent Geoff Houston and Government tourism manager Mark Viall as ‘Ray’s Lodge’. “I tried to cash a cheque for diesel in my 11-seater courtesy van, but they’d seen a few cowboys here,” Ray says. “It was six months before anyone trusted me enough to take a cheque.”

One rainy June day Domenic – a highly qualified American chef, came knocking for work.

By 1982 the pair had bought Roaring Meg’s Restaurant – a roaring success, which they owned for more than six years. The quaint miner’s cottage had been brought down from Skippers Canyon by bullock wagon in 1912, “named after a lady of the night who ran a boarding house and was renowned for yelling breakfast orders”.

“Fae and Bob Robertson had lived in the cottage prior and as dinner guests would point out their bedroom so I’d say, ‘You can have that table but leave your pyjamas on,’” Ray quips.

The handful of restaurateurs helped each other, sharing food if they ran out, replacing it the next week. “We were doing seven big nights a week, skiing for an hour before work, tearing down the hill to put on an apron and pick up a knife.”

An American tourist celebrating his anniversary with his wife insisted restaurant pianist - dry-witted cartoonist Garrick Tremain, play a tune they wanted that he didn’t know. “The guy kept insisting his wife knew it until Garrick said, ‘Well, your wife can play, and I’ll dance with you’, to which the guy replied: “I don’t believe in that sort of thing and stormed out the door,” Ray laughs.

American movie director George Lucas, of Star Wars and Indiana Jones fame, was a repeat customer during filming for ‘Willow’ locally – a fan of the fireside table. “He asked if he could take his shoes off and I said, ‘Fine – just not your pants’. He laughed, saying, ‘Nobody ever treats me like that’.”

In 1999 Ray started writing historical fiction books for fun, spending countless hours in the library researching until Google arrived. “I spent a year researching each of my 26 books. They’ve got to be squeaky clean.”

He secured an English publisher, which went under, and even had a film company approach him to turn ‘A Place Called Paradise’ into a multi-million-dollar movie. “The contract was all signed, but you share the risks, and they went under in the 2007 crash.” Amazon arrived and so Ray published e-books, quite successfully in what is a highly competitive industry. “It’s really a wonderful hobby. I find it stimulating.”

Ray and wife Sandra were made an irresistible offer by an American for their Moke Lake property in 2004 so moved to Wānaka. “But I still love the Wakatipu Basin,” he says.