Retired agricultural consultant Bill Gordon has been on the Wanaka Community Board and got the ‘Bugger Off’ tee shirt.

On the front it says ‘Boardies Unite’. On the back are the words: ‘Schoolies Bugger Off’. It’s a reference to his strident opposition to a proposed big Australian-style, “schoolies” party in Wanaka in 2007.

Bill is 70-years-old and now lives in Alexandra, where he and his wife Lyn recently built a new home.

From 2001-2007, he was the famously cantankerous, no bull-shit Wanaka Community Board chairman and a key 2020 visionary.

When he retired, the ‘Bugger Off’ tee-shirt was presented by board members who had unanimously agreed with him Wanaka should avoid Queenstown’s party town, hard-drinking reputation during the summer holidays.

When an event promoter outlined his Schoolies Festival proposal at a public forum, the board was incredulous. Bill said what everyone else was thinking and, to this day, no Schoolies event has ever been held in Wanaka.

During the early 2000s, Bill and his community board colleagues also helped facilitate several 2020 plans for the Wanaka ward.

That work has helped shape nearly two decades of development in Wanaka, Lake Hawea, Luggate, Cardrona, and Makarora.

With 2020 now upon us, the Wanaka App sought Bill’s views on the progress.

“At the time of 2020 [consultation], Wanaka was the fastest growing town or city in Australasia."

“People would move to Wanaka from places like Auckland and really criticise the restrictions on building “statement” homes in areas like the lake edge. Then give them a year or two and they would be extremely vocal in protecting those areas. A sort of “live here a while and love place the way it is” .

Bill and Lyn Gordon

“The throwaway line you often heard for that sort of attitude was, “Close the gates now that I have my bit of paradise”. That is a thought many residents held then, and still do.’’

“At the time 2020 was held you could drive around Wanaka, get a park, and not face long queues at the supermarket."

“The holiday period was probably never envisaged to be as busy and chaotic as it is. You can create zones, rules, plans, and roads but you can’t control popularity."

“Therein lies the dilemma. Meet the demand or constrain the demand?” Bill said.

Bill’s got a tick for his successors, who, with the Wanaka police, have largely succeeded in keeping hordes of Kiwi kids entertained and under control during the summer break.

But how have we gone with other 2020 dreams and schemes? Has Wanaka followed the 2020 plan?

“Largely, yes. The growth has exceeded expectations but largely, the development has taken place where it was envisaged.

“The council was really good at this one. They left it up to the community. They didn’t pretend they knew what Wanaka would want,’’ he said.

In the 2000s, Wanaka’s communities were focused on “not being dictated to by Queenstown”.

The attitude “really stood out,’’ and his “secret squirrels’’ tell him it still exists in Wanaka, although Queenstown Lakes District Council may not listen as well as it used to.

Even though Bill believes the council was a better listener in the earlier 2000s, Bill acknowledged Wanaka didn’t get everything it wanted because of financial constraints, something he described as “champagne tastes on a beer budget’’.

“To me, looking back, what was more important, more than if they were going to stick to the plan, was the community involvement. It was great. It really was. The population in Wanaka was about half what it is now. Everyone seemed to come along. The participation was huge because everyone knew everyone,’’ Bill recalled.

As Bill worked his way around meeting rooms, listening to different discussion groups, he was astounded to hear people from environmental and farming lobbies agreeing with each other on points of principle.

“That just blew me away ... Everyone was prepared to compromise. And the planners did not drive it. People put across their views then the planners put it into their form,’’ Bill said.

How does he compare that consultation style to now?

“I can’t understand why, when you have difficult problems, you would want to make it more difficult and not consult,’’ he said.

At the time, the late developer Bob Robertson had just purchased a large block of rural land from the Urquhart family for the Peninsula Bay development, while developer Allan Dippie’s plans for Three Parks were not even on the drawing board.

“Bob Robertson did a good job and people may tend to look back kindly. Allan Dippie seems to understand the community and is getting on with it too,’’ Bill said.

“But the big issue is the Meehan development at Northlake. I am not sure whether it is the style of it, but I drove around it recently and I wondered if that was what was envisaged."

Bill believes many areas identified as “sacred’’ from development are still sacred, such as the west side of Roys Bay and Dean’s Bank.

“Dublin Bay and Paddock Bay are two classics where developments in the future will be very sensitive. I believed the protected areas there will still hold, probably even more strongly now,’’ Bill said.

When it comes to Wanaka’s lakefront, Bill firmly believes “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’’.

“Leave the bloody thing alone! Planners who think they can improve on nature? It is a shame the Wanaka foreshore will lose the summer family experience due to the explosion of numbers,’’ he said.

At the Wanaka 2020 discussions, Wanaka Airport was a big issue.

Lake Wanaka Tourism and local businesses were beginning to question the airport’s future, but in 2003 there were no airport expansion plans, despite the introduction of commercial flights from Christchurch in 2004.

Bill went to Christchurch especially to catch the inaugural flight in a Beech-1900D aircraft and, to his chagrin, his pocket knife was confiscated and he was “treated like a terrorist”.

Air New Zealand, through its Eagle Air subsidiary, discontinued the Wanaka service in 2013, with the timing, cost, and unreliability of flights reported as issues.

The airline was reportedly reconsidering services to Wanaka in 2018 but, to date, regulatory compliance and infrastructure development issues are still being debated.

Bill recalls a suggestion the airport become a site for the town’s “dirty industry’’, with the goal of relocating industrial businesses and concrete manufacturers out of town.

That never happened and now Wanaka’s industrial precincts are surrounded by houses.

“Things happen quickly and people didn’t realise they [dirty industry] were going to end up in the middle of town,’’ Bill said.

Bill’s impressed with how Wanaka has dealt with controlling lagarosiphon in the lake, though he suffered public ignominy for harbouring the noxious oxygen weed in his fishpond. It was discovered by the harbourmaster, Marty Black.

The Tapanui-born man always had a practical bent. He admits he had ideas of being a lawyer, “but if I had been a lawyer I would be dead by now’’.

His curriculum vitae lists years and years of activities and services to all manner of boards and communities, especially in the agriculture, aviation, and education sectors.

He moved from West Otago to Wanaka in 1986 and was first elected to the board in 1994, before being appointed chairman in 2001.

He attributes his service ethos to the example set by his MP and Cabinet Minister father Peter [JB] Gordon, a West Otago farmer.

His grandmother, Dr Doris Gordon, was one of New Zealand’s first female doctors, a no-nonsense woman who, with her husband Bill, built a hospital in Stratford.

Bill greatly respected his father and delights in blaming him for the state of the roads, rail and controversial local government reforms that made his own community service possible.

“I was into it [community service] before he died and he was quite pleased about it, I think,’’ he said.

In Wanaka, Bill willingly got stuck in and did things. He was in the thick of the 1999 flood, clearing pumps, sourcing sandbags, and marshalling volunteer troops in an attempt to save the town.

Bill stepped down before the 2007 election and retired to Omarama with Lyn in 2008.

“I wanted him to move because he wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut and his blood pressure would have gone through the roof,’’ Lyn teased.

He got stuck into dairying, aviation, and water quality issues, before the couple decided in 2016 to move to a bigger town where Lyn could be closer to her family and hobbies.

Although Bill remains very interested in water quality issues, he’s giving a firm “no’’ to community service or writing submissions while he goes through the challenging treatment process for bladder cancer, diagnosed in 2018.

“Gardening and going to hospital are my main activities,’’ he said. “If I hadn’t been through what I’ve been through in the last year, I would have had more to say.’’

However, he has not lost interest and is hoping the newly elected Otago Regional Council will take “a more responsible approach’’ to its obligations on water.

Bill says he doesn’t mind being described as “cantankerous to the end’’, as put to him by colleague John Coe at his retirement function, but admits he doesn’t always intend to be that way.

“I write a gentle submission and a stroppy one and decide at the meeting which way to go,’’ he said. “You don’t like being radical but some of those fellows won’t appreciate it unless you do that.’’

Bill has many good stories about his years in Wanaka, many reportable, others kept secret’.

The reportable stories fill several scrapbooks that Bill and Lyn still chuckle over.

Bill has turned the “secret stories’’ into poems, some of which he gave to council colleagues on retirement.

Those staff members guilty of a spelling mistake or an error of fact, those who taunted Bill because he could not get his computer clock off 1996, or those who turned up to work with the flu, found themselves the butt of his banter.

Bill does not miss a chance to mock himself either.

Once upon a time, there were four male council officials who, unwilling to get wet, were dithering around a blocked drain outside the Lake Wanaka Centre during a torrential downpour. It threatened to flood the building.

Then along came deputy mayor Sally Middleton, who immediately rolled up her sleeves and single handedly solved the dilemma, without using gloves. 

PHOTOS: Marjorie Cook