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by Scott Stevens, Lakes Weekly Bulletin

Here is an interesting fact. In 1863 there was a town meeting to name Queenstown. Fit for Queen Victoria? Queenstown. All those in favour say aye… This was 162 years ago.

I’ve been living here for 28 years. That’s 17% of Queenstown’s official existence. My business partners in the Lakes Weekly boast an impressive 34% (Ferg) and 28% (Andy) of Queenstown’s entire existence.

If you look up top of this page at our masthead, Lakes Weekly, you will notice we are 1000 issues old this week. That’s 20 years, every week, on a Tuesday, except two weeks over Christmas. So, we have been part of Queenstown for 12% of its existence. Not long, but long enough.

Our locally owned and operated team are quite proud of this milestone. That’s a lot of Monday morning deadlines met, thanks to our amazing team and partners. Any business endeavour has its challenges, a media business in Queenstown has more than most. Yet here we are, 20 years on, telling Queenstown’s stories and writing our own.

We have always considered ourselves the barometer of local business confidence. That was our purpose in 2005, to support and give local businesses a place to be. When Queenstown’s on the up, so is the Lakes Weekly. The opposite, although not particularly welcome, is also true. We are riding the wave with you Queenstown. Congratulations to those businesses still here from 20 years ago and all those who have joined our business community since. Winners.

Perhaps the greatest changes to the ‘look’ of our town have happened in the last 20 years. We got quite big. However, to me the ‘feel’ is very much the same. It’s just a wonderful place to be, full of good people doing great things. Kindred spirits most of you.

I’ve enjoyed writing about my experiences and opinions (right or wrong) as a man on the street seeing what you see, feeling what you feel, as Queenstown continues its journey through time. Of course I have not written all 1000 front page editorials. Even I do not have that much opinion to share. Instead, I got ChatGPT to do it. No, only joking. Maybe next week when Artificial Intelligence has arms and legs. These last 20 years, it has taken a human. I haven’t agreed with you all, but is that not the point of having an opinion? To initiate conversation? Note to future contributors, our brief is simple. See it, say it, mean it. True local opinions on real local issues will keep Queenstown focused on what really matters. Us. The people who live here.

Keep going well Queenstown. We thank our supporters on both sides of the business, readers, advertisers and internally, our team past and present who have helped develop and worked on not only the Lakes Weekly and Jobfix.co.nz, but our future, the Queenstown App. When trees don’t produce paper for our print edition because they are too busy absorbing carbon to save the planet, the Queenstown App will be where we are. Download it now!

Well, that’s our 12% contribution thus far. I’m sure we can do more. Let’s keep moving forward Queenstown.