Book cover: Under the Himalayan SkyCAROLINE HARKERAmongst the mountaineers speaking at the Mountain Book Festival in Wanaka last weekend was a different kind of adventurer - Wanaka’s Marg Jefferies, who went to live in the remote Khumbu region of Nepal in 1979 with her husband Bruce and three young children.With no electricity or running water, living on a traditional Nepalese diet dominated by potatoes and tea, at an altitude of 3,500m, the two-year sojourn was an adventure the Jefferies family all loved.Nearly 40 years later Marg has finished writing a book about it. That seems a long time, but Marg has had a busy life. She and Bruce have lived in Wanaka for the past 11 years - which is the longest they have lived anywhere together.Their married life started with eight years at Whakapapa Village in Tongariro National Park where Bruce was a park ranger. During that time their three children were born. After that they went to Wellington for two years where Bruce worked for the NZ National Park Service, and then to Nepal to help establish the Sagarmatha National Park - which includes Mount Everest and is home to the Sherpa people. This is the period Marg’s book Under the Himalayan Sky is based on.After Nepal, the family returned to Whakapapa for seven years. Marg and Bruce’s globe trotting with Bruce’s conservation work continued - with three more years in Nepal, two in Gisborne (where Bruce was the Department of Conservation Regional Conservator), five in Papua New Guinea, and five in Laos.So why did it take Marg so long to write Under the Himalayan Sky - Establishing the Sagarmatha National Park - A New Zealand family’s experience? One reason is that as well as raising her family, she was busy writing five other books.They include two editions of The Story of Mount Everest National Park, a third on the same area (2006), one on Chitwan National Park, A Visitor's Guide to Taupo, and two editions of Adventuring in New Zealand for the Sierra Club (1993, 2000)."I wrote the NZ adventuring book when we were based in Gisborne. I drove all around the country doing it, sometimes on my own, sometimes with company. I realised I knew far more about our country than most DOC people did.”Under the Himalayan Sky is the first time Marg has written a personal book. When she and Bruce took their family to Nepal in 1979, daughter Lynda was 10 years old, and sons Nevan and Kerry where eight and five. She has based her memoir on diaries written during their two years in the Khumbu, letters she wrote to her mother during that time, and information she has gathered during many return trips to Nepal."I wrote it on and off and put it down for up to 20 years at a time, when I got busy with other things. It never seems quite the right time to publish a book about something that happened in the 70s, but with the advent of e-publishing everything seemed easier. Vajra Books [in Kathmandu] said yes to the book straight away."In May last year the manuscript was ready and [husband] Bruce got a World Heritage job in the [Sagarmatha National] Park. It seemed like karma, so we went. I left the manuscript in Kathmandu and went to the Park for a week and when I came back the galley proof was ready. We did the rest by email, so it was easy.”The book offers a great insight into a family adventure in this once remote area, now visited by 35,000 tourists and mountaineers annually. It is a compelling read, whether Marg is describing the difficulties of feeding her family, the saga of installing an aga, the many treks the family embark on, friendships with the locals, or the dramas of helping establish the national park.For a taster, here’s the first paragraph:"My fingers and toes were numb. Sweat generated by the effort of climbing from our house to Syangboche airstrip at 3600 metres had dampened my clothing and now, after an hour of inactivity, I felt cold and fidgety. The morning was still young, with that cold crisp clarity found only in the mountains. Stretching before me, south towards India, was the short airstrip carved across the rolling hillside. Beyond it the blue sky faded to a faint distant haze. On both sides jagged peaks soared skyward in picture perfection, their toothed ridges, stark black spires and snowy glaciers creased by crevasses glittering in the sunlight. It was a scene I would never tire of."While they love going back to Nepal, after 11 years living in Wanaka Marg and Bruce still love it here. "There’s something about the mountains here,” Marg said. Son Nevan lives here with his family, which was a big drawcard, while daughter Lynda lives in Hamilton, and Kerry in England.Although they now have a long-term home, Marg and Bruce don’t stay still for too long. In September they are off for another adventure, this time to China and Pakistan.PHOTO: Supplied

Anna van RielAward winning local musician Anna van Riel has launched a new single for children, with a focus on positive empowerment around money.The track, One Little Dollar, was inspired by the upcoming campaign by the Commission for Financial Capability to help encourage children to save money."This year in August we have "sorted money week” which is kind of like music month in terms of promoting money education, awareness around debt and planning,” sorted.org.nz coordinator Claudia Gunn said. (Claudia is also a Kiwi Kids performer - as is Anna.)Claudia initially sent an email to the Kiwi Kids Collective; a group of children’s music performers in New Zealand, offering the opportunity to submit a money song."I never learned any money skills in school and spend the longest time fumbling about, trying to figure out how to manage funds and invest. Even if it’s deciding on whether it was smarter to spend your pocket money on bubble gum or pineapple lumps, understanding how your money works is a gold,” Anna said. "I jumped at the opportunity, and started writing a song right away. I took it into Danny Fairley in his Wanaka studio and he helped me make it fun and encouraging”.One Little Dollar will be shared during the Money Week launch.PHOTO: Supplied

John Darby has been getting kids into science for half a century.MADDY HARKERWanaka’s John Darby has been made a Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand for a lifetime of work dedicated to research, conservation and communicating science.Only three people from across the country are receiving the distinguished award this year."It came from left field for me,” John said, "but I’m very honoured to receive it”.John will be presented with the award by the president of the Royal Society of New Zealand in Wanaka on August 4. This date also happens to be the 150th anniversary of the society.In Wanaka, John is best known for his conservation work with endangered grebes, but he actually has a lifetime of work promoting science behind him."The real reason for the award has been for the promotion of science and particularly taking it into the public arena,” John said. "I’ve always been passionate about science and what it can do and what it can achieve.”John began promoting science more than 50 years ago, when he helped with a children’s science club in Canterbury.When he moved to Dunedin, John started the Young Explorers programme, a week-long science programme for children. Young Explorers ran for 17 years, and would include about 400 children each week.He also started science workshops for secondary school children, which were run in conjunction with the University of Otago."I was very aware that a high proportion of kids didn’t know what they wanted to do when they left school, so we took 10-12 subjects that kids were not taught at school and taught them. It was basically to open their eyes to the various disciplines in science.”Some of the children John mentored have gone on to be professors in science.There is now a programme called ‘Hands On Science’ offered at the University of Otago which originated from the programme John founded.Other career highlights include setting up the world’s first yellow-eyed penguin reserve, being a founding trustee for the Otago Natural History Trust, and setting up Discovery World as an interactive science centre at Otago Museum.John also received an honorary lectureship of zoology at the University of Otago, having helped students in science with their postgraduate studies for 20 years.His work with the grebes in Wanaka came along by chance."I had only ever seen a single grebe in my entire life, and I came to Wanaka and saw two, and thought as a zoologist ‘is there something we can do about that?’”John started writing the Grebe Diary, published regularly in the Wanaka Sun, to introduce people to the biology of the species and spark interest. John said he thinks he has written around 100 Grebe Diaries since conservation work began four years ago.He is amazed how well the grebes have done: "I never imagined we would fledge 150 chicks in Roys Bay marina.”To be considered as a Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand, an individual must be nominated by their peers. Nominees are then judged by a special panel of members of the Royal Society of New Zealand.Companions must have outstanding leadership or eminent contributions to promoting and advancing science, technology or the humanities in New Zealand.PHOTO: curiousminds.nz

Mark DaveySUE WARDSMark Davey figured out early what he wanted to do with his life: all it took was completing one exercise in the classic job-hunters’ manual ‘What Colour is your Parachute.”"I never read it, but I did the first exercise: write seven paragraphs about yourself,” Mark said. It was immediately clear his skill was in having something to communicate and figuring out the best way of doing it.Mark has now clocked 20 years in advertising, mostly with his boutique advertising agency ("a very classy way of saying small”) Black, which focuses on "compellingly communicating causes”.Black has won a slew of awards, including the Davey Award last year - a creative award for Indie agencies. Black won it for a Salvation Army ad which depicts people falling at 1000 frames a second into darkness. It was the most successful Red Shield Appeal ever, Mark said."We’re good at doing a lot with not much, and eliciting a response,” he said.Mark cites a World Vision campaign as one of his proudest achievements. The campaign aimed to get 1000 children sponsored in 1000 hours - double what had been done before. They reached the target and other World Vision marketing directors went on to use the concept successfully."That is one idea that went global and has resulted in a massive positive spiral of over 100,000 children getting sponsored and their families supported,” Mark said. "It demonstrates the power of an idea and the positive spiral of an idea if I can do my job well.”After realising his life’s goal back in 1996, the business and communication management graduate and his wife, Lucy (they met at university in Palmerston North and married at 20), moved to Australia and Mark soon started working at advertising agency Pilgrim, which was set up to help charities.When Pilgrim set up in New Zealand Mark moved to Auckland and got a position on the board of both companies. When Pilgrim decided to sell up in 2005, Mark decided to fly solo, and re-branded the agency as Black."I wanted something memorable, simple, and New Zealand,” he said. He trademarked Black and the NZ Rugby Union eventually came calling - which is why he now has an exclusion from selling sportswear.It’s unlikely Mark would have the time for a sportswear business anyway. He and Lucy are "quite entrepreneurial”. In addition to Black, they’ve set up a boutique digital company - Halo - and are currently securing prime locations. Halo markets large scale digital billboards, which can offer six ads on rotation at eight seconds each, and can be customised to respond to the data around it (for example, the billboard can recognise the make of vehicle driving towards it and select an appropriate ad). Cloud-based, the billboards can be operated by Mark from Wanaka. "Someone can book something from overseas and I can get the ad up in minutes.”The couple have also established two non-profit websites: truthcoaches.com, a seven session "life changing” course, and seektofindgod.com."I’ve had an awareness of God as long as I can remember. To me it’s the greatest story of love that there is. It’s a bit hard to get past the God who died for you,” Mark said.It seems the couple have practiced what they preach for many years. They were giving soup and support to kids getting wasted at Bondi Beach back in the 1990s, and these days they are putting their money where their mouths are by donating 30 percent of their business profits. They’ve given "loads” to projects around the world, such as a community bank in Cambodia."People and planet before profit. That’s our M.O, to set aside profits for environmental and community based causes, most of which have an evangelical element,” Mark said.The Bible doesn’t have the monopoly on truth, Mark said, and proves it by quoting a famous Steinlager ad: What you say ‘no’ to defines you."We don’t pick up clients when we can’t reflect their values,” he said. It’s all part of trying to change the world for the positive. Mark, who was on the board of the sustainable business network in Auckland around 2007, also ensures their businesses are sustainable (business cards are made from polypropylene and their vehicles and Mark’s flights are all carbon neutral - offset by tree planting)."And now we’re virtual, really,” Mark said. People contribute to Black from all over the world, and a good example is a recent campaign for German client Christian Blind Mission International. Images of Uganda were sent to Wanaka; the script was written by a guy in a La-Z-Boy in Tauranga; it was edited in a Waiheke Island bach, and designed in a bungalow in Onehunga.Mark pulled the whole thing together from Wanaka, where the family has been based for the past five years."We were in Auckland but not from Auckland,” he said. He grew up in Otaki, but Lucy’s parents live here and her family had an association with a holiday house in Tarras since the 1950s."It was always our desire to live here if possible,” Mark said. "It’s as natural as breathing.”"There’s nothing as rich as meeting people in person, but I see clients about as much as I used to - it’s mostly email and telephone anyway.” But he travels every fortnight, and said the amount of travel takes its toll on the family. "When I’m away I’m working, but to them I’m just absent.”Having Lucy, a director of both companies, working from home makes it possible, Mark said. Lucy is also a children’s author and songwriter - she’s had 12 books published with Scholastic, and more with Mainly Music. The Davey family includes Hannah, 19, Samuel, 16, Holly Grace, 12, and Hope, almost 2.Mark has been in the business of helping people with "audacious and worthwhile” visions for 20 years, but it’s a long way from the relaxed young surfer he was when he first picked up What Colour is Your Parachute.Years of planning for clients helped him transfer those skills to his own life. He and Lucy take time every year to examine their personal and family goals, and Mark said he no longer feels that life’s slipping by. "It’s very freeing to be purposeful. People don’t just get wiser by getting older - it doesn’t happen unless you make it happen.”Surfing the wave at the Hawea Whitewater Park and helping to change the world: it’s all part of Mark’s plan.PHOTO: Supplied

Tania BrettSUE WARDSFrom happy and humble beginnings growing up in Wanaka’s deserted paradise, Tania Brett is inspiring a new generation of Wanaka young people to learn about Maori culture.One of the few Ngai Tahu residents of Wanaka, Tania grew up on Warren Street in Wanaka, opposite the old school."It was just like Paradise - with nobody around,” Tania (42) said. Tania grew up barefoot and "always outside doing sporty things”. She remembers the school playground as her own backyard, having fun with the neighbourhood kids, and splashing in the old swimming pool at the Dinosaur Park."I used to just go down to the lake, that was my escape. Now I have to go all the way past Penrith to escape.”She attended the Wanaka Area School before moving to the "brand new high school” (Mount Aspiring College) from form 2 (Year 8), when the roll was about 200 students.She and her husband Lachy really were childhood sweethearts: they met at age 10 (in Noelene Pullar’s class). "I used to move my desk in line with his so I could see him,” Tania said. They started going out when they were 14. Now with three children (Melia, 11, Rahana, 8, and Kahu, 6), and a double degree from Otago University, Tania still has a special connection with Wanaka and a special role supporting Te Reo in the area.Growing up in 1980s Wanaka there was a tangible contrast between the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy, Tania said. Her father Dave (who worked for the Pest Destruction Board) and mother Lyndal raised four girls: Nadine, Teneka (Bop), Tania and Cholena.Tania remembers the "little things” - like wearing socks on her hands in the winter, not having an extra school blouse when hers got ripped, and having to front up to the school secretary to say she didn’t have the money for school ski days and suchlike."I think I grew up thinking ‘I want more than that’,” she said.There was an extra stigma as one of Wanaka’s only Maori families, Tania said. "People expected us to speak Te Reo, sing it.” But the family had lost touch with their language. Tania’s maternal grandfather, for example, was strapped for speaking Maori at school and didn’t pass it on to his children."There was always something missing for us. I really wanted to get back to my Maori roots.”Tania followed Lachy to Otago University and studied education papers with a Te Reo component, but struggled. "It’s never been an easy road for me, I’ve struggled with discipline. We were party people, not into education. There were times when I just wanted to give up. I was always on the back foot.”Lachy suggested she take a year out to work for his father, dentist Steve Brett, back in Wanaka."His parents helped me heaps, I got inspired by both of them. They introduced me to this other side of life.”Tania was motivated to return to university and earn a degree. "I loved learning, once I learned that I could actually learn! I always thought I couldn’t do it.”Tania said her self-confidence came through sports (she has excelled at netball, basketball, softball, surfing - the list goes on), but with her new maturity she returned to university to take on a double degree (Bachelor of PE and Education).Seven years later, in 2000, Tania graduated. She was the first in her family to attend university. "To me it was a really big milestone in my life - it was just a hard road. That was a huge thing for the whole whanau.”She earned her black belt in karate the same year. Studying karate, which she took up as a teenager (Lachy started even younger), helped give her focus and discipline, she said.After a few years teaching in coastal Otago, setting up a karate dojo with Lachy, and getting into the property market, homesickness for Wanaka became too strong."Lachy and I used to come back home in our university holidays. We’d go rock climbing; we used to bike up Mount Maude and we could see the area growing. I always wanted to come back. I missed the lake and mountains. I have a real sense of whanau here.”The couple had planned a year of climbing in 2004. "Lachy and I got right into rock climbing and mountaineering.” (They had climbed Mt Aspiring in 1998.) She resigned from her teaching job and they prepared to move, then she became pregnant. Melia was born in 2005.The couple lived next door to Tania’s parents when Melia was a baby, before moving to Tarras, and now Hawea Flat - opposite the school. "Because we grew up beside the school, that section was quite appealing to me.”Tania has four lines of Maori blood: Ngai Tahu, Waitaha, Kahungungu and Katimamoe. "It’s been a huge journey for me to try to track it down.” She is mostly self-taught in Te Reo: "I’m still learning. I still feel like a beginner.”Tania taught Te Reo part time at Tarras School for a few years and loved it. She is now relief teaching at MAC (PE and home room - she taught Te Reo last year) and teaching kapahaka with fellow teacher Kaz Saunders. "We take the kapahaka students every Wednesday at lunchtime and last period, supporting them in their waiata and haka.”"Wanaka is monocultural, so it’s important to get the group out performing. It gives them a sense of community and belonging, it gives them the relationship with the community. I don’t want it to be tokenism, but if we’re just out there doing it, it will be part of the culture.”The kapahaka group has become an impressive fixture in the community, with notable performances recently at the opening of the Wanaka Recreation Centre and the opening of Cardrona’s chondola - in freezing conditions.The group is growing in popularity too, with as many as 35 members now.Tania sees her role as supporting the group in the background, but she strongly believes in the visibility of Maori teachers. "I think it’s really important for Maori kids’ confidence. I’m Ngai Tahu: going into the classroom, being up there and being confident and happy, that can help other Maori people rise up.”"I’m not the best Maori speaker, but I just do it. Often I say ‘yes’ to things that are way out of my comfort zone - it’s for my family, my kids, those others.”She’s working with the college to incorporate the Maori values of aroha (love), whanau (family), and manakitanga (being a good host) in the school’s strategic direction. The well known Maori proverb sums it up best, she said: "He aha te mea nui o te ao - what is the most important thing in the world? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. It is the people, it is the people, it is the people.”Tania is also the Maori liaison person, representing Ngai Tahu, on the Festival of Colour board of trustees. "I’m passionate about the Maori side. I really enjoy supporting them in that role, and I’d like to get more local Maori involved - we’re bringing in the kapahaka group as well.”Tania’s doing her best to change that cultural aspect of her home town. Meanwhile the quiet town she grew up in has grown and changed in other ways. "I’m trying to embrace it, grow with it. I’m just learning to accept the changes.”PHOTO: Supplied

Sam StoutMADDY HARKERIf it seems like you run into Sam Stout at just about every community event in Wanaka, it’s probably because she’s involved in almost everything.This year alone, Sam’s been part of the Wanaka Artisan Market, the Wanaka Wedding Fair, Homespun Presentations, and Losing Faith - a play that has just toured the region. On top of all that, three months ago she launched her own wedding and events planning business, Tregold Productions.Sam is well-known about town. She has spent much of her life in Wanaka, but has also lived in the UK, Australia and other parts of New Zealand. Despite her English accent, she has spent more time "down under” than she has in her native UK.The name of her latest business venture, Tregold, has a lot of significance for Sam, signaling both her family heritage and her adopted home."Tregold is the name of my family farm in Cornwall", Sam said. "My grandparents left their home with their babies to move across the country and start a new life for themselves away from everything they knew.”"My grandparents were really pioneering, and I really admire that spirit of enterprise. People do that moving to Wanaka too, starting over in a new place."‘Tre’ is also cornish for hamlet or community, and the gold connection relates to the gold in the hills and the golden colours in this region. As the old saying goes in Otago: "blue sky, golden hills”."The name Tregold really is who I am and what has formed me as a person.”Sam spent her teens in Wanaka and lives here permanently now - although she could have ended up anywhere. When she emigrated from the UK with her family in the 1990s, they flipped a coin to choose between settling in New Zealand or Australia. And then it came to deciding on where to live in New Zealand, Sam closed her eyes and put a pin on a map of New Zealand.It landed on Wanaka. The family had been visiting friends in Nelson at the time, so they caught the night bus to Queenstown, rented a car and drove over the Crown Range."It was probably only a few days after that that I was enrolled in school. It was just like, ‘that’s that then, this is home now”.Sam finished school before studying acting and theatre craft in Sydney, spending two years working in Australia afterwards, then working in theatre and event management in the UK.As a way to help pay the bills in an unpredictable theatre industry, Sam became a chef, something she said has been really useful throughout her life."The lessons you learn in the kitchen take you through any aspect of your life. Because it’s so high pressure, when the pressure’s on you have to really trust yourself and you have to learn how to step back and break down what needs to be done and make it happen. With that kind of experience you can go into any situation and know you can handle it.”Cheffing has also taken Sam to some pretty amazing places: she and her boyfriend managed a ski lodge at Ruapehu for three winters and spent a season cooking in the Hollyford Valley. Earlier this year, Sam created a five-star menu for a group of people. She was helicoptered into the mountains to serve the meal al fresco - a pretty cool experience for a side job.Sam’s passions are community and education, so it makes sense that she has leaned towards acting, theatre and event management in her working life."I’ve always been really interested in education and community, and I think that giving back is really important. That’s why I always put my hand up for things. Say for example when it comes to the arts in Wanaka: if we want arts in Wanaka we have to make it happen for ourselves.”One of Sam’s jobs in the UK was working for the Eden Project, an educational charity for sustainability, in Cornwall. Its location: a huge crater; housing the largest rainforest in captivity; and stunning gardens, which become a location for exhibitions and concerts featuring some of the world’s biggest bands.At the Eden Project, Sam worked largely in venue planning, also working with bands and the circus. It gave her many of the skills that motivated her to start Tregold Productions here in Wanaka earlier this year, after moving back permanently two and a half years ago."Weddings feel like an extension of other things I’ve done,” Sam said. "I’m really loving it.”"There’s something really magical about helping people celebrate their love for each other. Because I’m super organised and really calm it helps them, and I offer quite a holistic service.”Her new business won’t stop Sam from being involved in other aspects of the community - her experience working on Losing Faith has made Sam keen to help develop the theatre scene in Wanaka."There are so many talented people in town that there is definitely scope for an official theatre group. How cool would it be to, once every three months, watch some comedy skits, or two productions a year or something. How awesome would that be for the town?”She’s got boundless enthusiasm, but it seems to come naturally."When you’re passionate about something it’s easy to be motivated,” Sam said. "I’m really motivated by other people and their excitement and passions too, so that really helps.”"I really feel as though I’ve returned home. I’ve gone off and had adventures and learnt some really amazing things, and now I’m home.”PHOTO: Supplied

Sean O’ConnellSUE WARDSA quote by Albert Einstein hangs in Sean O’Connell’s office: "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” It serves as a reminder to Sean and his staff to look at things a bit differently, helping Sean, an Irishman in Wanaka, live a creatively practical life.Sean is a busy man, running a design business, helping build his family home, and poking fun at Wanaka issues once a week as his cartooning alter-ego, Penbroke.He was born and raised on the Irish-speaking west coast of Ireland, in Connemara."Where I grew up was probably 99 percent Catholic. If you weren’t Catholic you probably wouldn’t admit it.” Ireland was "well shackled to the Catholic Church” in those days, Sean said."For hundreds of years the fight for independence and the fight for the church went hand in hand. Now the pendulum has swung the other way.” The exposure of years of sexual offending by Catholic priests has played a large part in people’s distrust of the church, Sean said.In his own boarding school, the students knew which priests to avoid. One of those priests was later imprisoned."The Bishop of Galway used to come and give us lectures on the evils of sex before marriage,” Sean said. It turned out the Bishop was having a relationship with his housekeeper, fathering her son."The rank hypocrisy annoyed Irish people the most,” Sean said.Sean studied industrial design in Dublin for two years and Limerick for a further two years before working for a design consultancy in Dublin. After a couple of years he moved to London to make enough money to travel. His work as a freelance industrial designer there covered everything from infrared sensors to beer taps.In 1988 he and a mate made it to Sydney, where Sean spent the next 16 years. He was joined by wife Claire (they had met at college), and they had two of their sons in Sydney, Oisín, 18, and Ferdia, 16. (Rory, 11, was born in Dunedin.)Sean’s design work led him to New Zealand. While in Sydney he worked mostly for General Electric, visiting New Zealand to work with Fisher & Paykel. He and Claire were thinking of moving to hinterland NSW, where they would have more space, but after a 10 day holiday in New Zealand they decided to move here instead, choosing Wanaka as their favourite place over Karitane, Clyde and Glenorchy.Sean’s first job in Wanaka was selling real estate. Commission-only sales meant an erratic income, and the experience was a crash course in how the Wanaka community operated."I was a bit naive thinking I could move into a small community and form those trusted relationships straight away,” he said.When Wanaka Signs came on the market, he and Claire thought it would be a good business in a growing town, and they were right. "We also thought it was one of the few creative businesses we could do in Wanaka.” That was 2007, and the O’Connells recently clocked up 10 years in the business."I enjoy it. No two days are the same.” One day it’s graphic design, the next he’s putting signs on cars, or climbing ladders to put them on a building. The business weathered the recession in 2008/9, and in the past 18 months, Sean said, "Wanaka has found its sixth gear.”While Sean’s training was in product design, he always liked drawing and illustrating. So when Nikki Heath, co-owner of the Wanaka Sun, approached him about seven years ago to ask if he would draw a weekly cartoon for the community newspaper, Sean was keen.They came up with the name ‘Penbroke’ - a play on Wanaka’s former name Pembroke - and Sean reckons he’s only missed five or six editions since then.There have been surprisingly few controversies about his weekly cartoons. A cartoon about tourists’ driving attracted hate mail from overseas (well, one letter from Australia), and his cartoons about the rowing club’s search for a home provoked comment (Sean acknowledges the rowing club’s proposed waterfront home is a controversial site, but is happy with the decision).His cartoons often feature a salty old bloke, partly inspired by Wal in Footrot Flats: the Speights-drinking, shorts-year-round, Southern Man. "Everybody knows people like that.” He has noticed a "southern uniform”, and Southern Man’s cartoon wife is usually wearing it.A Penbroke cartoon from 2014.Sean has a tight timeframe for the weekly cartoon: the editor lets him know the stories for the week on Wednesday afternoon and he has until early evening to deliver. Sometimes it takes him 15 minutes, sometimes 45. "Sometimes it will come straight to you.” The criteria: it has to be funny and not offensive.People sometimes ask him to do a cartoon about Trump, or women’s rights, he said. "But it has to be topical and funny - not necessarily related to Wanaka, but it has to be in that week’s newspaper.”He admires British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and Ireland’s Tom Mathews, but believes: "Down south there’s not an appetite for that sort of cutting political stuff. Gerald Scarfe was the ultimate cartoonist - the stuff he did of Maggie Thatcher was brutal. But withering is not on the menu down here.”Sean said he doesn’t see people with a cartoonist’s eye, but his observations suggest he does. ("I’ve always seen John Key, with his high forehead and long nose, as a vampire”, for example). He won’t be drawn on specific "eejits” around town, though. "I haven’t done any scathing cartoons. The ones that people will say something to you about, the ones people relate to more, are the jokey ones.”So he’s "not on any moral crusade”, it’s just good clean fun. He has drawn more than 400 cartoons by now, and hopes to one day compile the best 100 or so in a book, maybe to mark 10 years of work.Sean hasn’t returned to Ireland for eight years (he misses it, but is always glad to leave after a few weeks, he said). He’s part of this community, he’s been on the Montessori board of trustees, coached soccer and rowing, and has watched the town dealing with growing pains."Everybody lives in Wanaka for a reason. We didn’t want to live in Queenstown, we thought it was too busy.” Wanaka is getting busier, but Sean said the development will continue whether we like it or not. "The challenge is affordable housing and infrastructure.”Retaining Wanaka’s town centre and a sense of community is important to him. "I like that you can go into town and you’re always going to meet people. That seems to be the thing most people talk about - wanting to retain a sense of community.”Sean’s mix of fantasy and abstract thinking are helping maintain that sense of community too, through his business - and his cartoons, which give us the opportunity to laugh at ourselves.PHOTO: Supplied

Brian and his wife Maureen.MADDY HARKERBrian Cleugh, one of the founding members of the Upper Clutha Tramping Club, was awarded the club’s first ever life membership at a club meeting this month.Brian had been with the club since its formation in 2002, serving 14 years on the committee, including two as president."Brian’s wealth of experience and local knowledge has been absolutely invaluable to the club,” former president Karen Marinkovic said."If you are up in the hills and want to know the name of some distant mountain, Brian will know. If you are planning a trip into unfamiliar country, and need advice as to the best route, Brian is the man to ask.”Brian has been a member of the New Zealand Alpine Club since 1956. He has climbed extensively in New Zealand, and has also made expeditions to the Himalayas and Andes mountains.Highlights of his time with the club include reconnoitring and then introducing other club members to new destinations, particularly Queens Drive on the Remarkables, and Mount Armstrong and Mount Cross above the Haast Pass.Noting that "behind every great man is a great woman”, Marinkoviç also expressed the club’s gratitude to Brian’s wife Maureen, who has accompanied him on many of his adventures.PHOTO: Supplied

Janelle and Pierre ChampagnatMADDY HARKERFor free spirits Pierre and Janelle Champagnat, a move from Auckland to Wanaka and a serendipitous business opportunity have enabled the couple to live a simpler life.Pierre and Janelle are the representatives for three European ski products here in New Zealand: the Yooner (a sit-ski), the Wingjump (the world's first pair of wings designed to enhance skiing), and the Skiddie (a pocket-sized wheel you can attach to your ski tips so they don’t have to be carried).The couple are bringing these "ski thrills” to New Zealand to offer something different, something quirky, to New Zealand snowsports lovers. Their business motto is "why zig when you can zag?”, pointing out there are "too many ziggers in this world”.Pierre and Janelle describe themselves as unconventional; they don’t strive for success in the traditional sense."Our top value is actually freedom - it’s important to us. We have the freedom of this beautiful place for a start,” Janelle said. "We don’t see success as what a lot of people see success as. To us freedom and not having an attachment to material things, that’s really important. We like the simplicity of our lives and having the choice to live our lives our way.”The couple moved to Wanaka in January without a plan for work, but the perfect opportunity presented itself in Yooner.For Pierre, moving to Wanaka felt like returning home: he grew up in Annecy, a town in southeast France which sits on the northern tip of Lake Annecy and is surrounded by mountains.Annecy’s resemblance to Wanaka is uncanny."It’s very similar to Wanaka in a lot of ways, and both places have something very majestic about them. It was the word that first came to mind when I came here: majestic,” Pierre said.Pierre and Janelle are already well integrated into the local community: They’re members of the Chamber of Commerce, Cube Entrepreneurship Series, Wanaka Ski Club, the "Newish to Wanaka” Facebook page and more."We felt incredibly welcomed by the community when we got here,” Janelle said. "We love new people and new things, so getting to know people hasn’t been hard for us.”Like many recent Wanaka arrivals, the pair moved from Auckland on a whim in search of a simpler life."Last year we didn’t intend on moving anywhere, but Wanaka came to mind,” Janelle said. "We came to visit and just knew in our gut that it was right.”The pair met on a blind date in Auckland in 2013. Pierre, who has two children, is trained as a chef, and ran Pyrenees Cafe in Auckland before moving South. Janelle, as well as being a mother of six, is a writer who has also worked as a life coach.Pierre grew up in the mountains, skiing, working as a ski instructor, and having all sorts of outdoor adventures, so the switch from running a cafe to spending every day on a skifield promoting ski products was pretty ideal."The mountain has always been a big part of my life. And now Cardrona skifield is my office every day.”Moving to Wanaka gave Janelle and Pierre the chance to slow down and reconnect with their values, they say."It’s a completely different rhythm here,” Janelle said.PHOTO: Wanaka App

Wattie Thompson pictured in a newspaper during his cross-country solo walk.LAURA WILLIAMSONEvery Sunday in the Wanaka App, we run a profile of an interesting local, and we are always struck that, despite living somewhere with a small population, we never run out of people to write about. Turns out this is not a new thing - the region’s past is full of fascinating characters too, like Wattie Thompson. When we heard his story, we knew we had to share it.Wattie Thompson spent his last days quietly in Luggate, a much-loved member of the community known for his joviality and skill with a pool cue. After he died, his photo hung on a wall in the Luggate Hotel for years.Many of the pub patrons who glanced up from their pints to look at it would have had little idea that not only was the man in the photograph the last alluvial gold miner in the region, he played a part in one of New Zealand’s greatest tragedies.Born in England in 1909, Wattie immigrated to New Zealand as a baby with his parents, who settled at Huntly. He moved as a young man to the Ardgour Valley, near Tarras, and spent time working both there and up the Lindis until, at the age of 30, he volunteered to serve in the New Zealand Army at the start of World War II. He was captured in North Africa spent three years as a POW in Italy - wartime experiences that some say left him a committed pacifist for the rest of his life.Upon his return to Central Otago, he turned to gold prospecting almost full-time. In the Lindis Valley, he worked a claim at Camp Creek, located in the area off of SH8 now designated as Nine Mile Historic Reserve; his old two-room concrete hut is still there, near the remains of the Lindis Pass Hotel and a huge creekside pile of tailings, testament to the work done by Wattie, and the miners who came before him.He later prospected at Bendigo Gully, near Tarras, where he worked away sieving gravel and hunting for flecks of gold; he became well-known both for his hermetic lifestyle and for being the the Bendigo Goldfields’ last miner. As interest in Wattie grew, curious visitors started to stop in, and were sometimes handed a pan and a pile of gravel so they could have a go themselves.Wattie "retired” to Luggate in the late seventies, though he didn’t really stop work, continuing to look for, and find, gold in Luggate Creek.His first brush with notoriety, though, came not due to his mining endeavours, but to his religious beliefs. At the age of 56, in December 1964, Wattie set off on foot on a journey from Bluff to Cape Reinga wearing a sandwich board calling on New Zealanders to "repent” and to "remember the saboth [sic]”. He said at the time he had had a life-changing vision while alone in his hut, one which left him both deeply religious and sceptical of what he saw as the commercialisation of the mainstream churches.His trek got a bit of media attention, attracting coverage in the ‘New Zealand Truth’ tabloid newspaper; later, once he’d returned to prospecting, a writer from ‘New Zealand Woman’s Weekly’ even visited him to do a profile. She described "a slight figure with a lined, brown face, bright blue eyes … snowy hair, a white growth on the chin, body tanned through holes in his short, patched trousers, bare feet”, and praised his "simple, contented life”.His second foray into the public eye was more tragic.A humble man who needed little, Wattie owned few material possessions. People who met him commented on how he seemed happy with nothing more than his mining kit, his Bible, a radio, a tractor or two (one ended up upside down in Luggate Creek), and a jar filled with gold flakes. The jar has become a bit legendary - local rumour suggests Wattie buried it, but despite extensive searching, it has never been found.Wattie, however, was fascinated - possibly because he was so interested in geology - by Antarctica, and when he was 70-years-old, he took some of what he had amassed from his veteran’s benefit and the proceeds of gold mining and bought an uncharacteristically extravagant ticket for an 11-hour Antarctic flightseeing trip, scheduled for November 1978.He went on the flight, but, thanks to low cloud, saw nothing of the frozen continent he had dreamed of viewing; so he decided to go back.Wattie boarded Air New Zealand flight TE901 for a second time on November 28, 1979. He lost his life, along with the other 256 people on board, when the flight crashed into Mount Erebus.A memorial service was held in Luggate and Wattie was laid to rest under a quartz rock headstone at the Tarras cemetery, where it remains today, a reminder that extraordinary people are everywhere, even in the smallest of places.The Luggate Community Association is currently undertaking a project to write and publish a comprehensive history of the Luggate township and its community. To help cover costs, the LCA is seeking local businesses to come on board as sponsors. If you’d like to help make this community project happen, contact [email protected]: Supplied

Jason Watkins outside The Cube headquarters at the Cell, on Helwick Street.CAROLINE HARKERWhen Jason Watkins was interviewed for the position of Business Development Manager at the Cube, not one of the interviewers recognised him, although he had been living and working in Wanaka for five years.He must have impressed them because they gave him the job, and one of the first things he started working on was doing something about the isolation of like-minded people in the local business community.The Cube (Centre of Unique Business Evolution) was set up to maintain the momentum generated by the Wanaka Gigatown campaign. Jason’s job is to help develop opportunities for existing local businesses, attract new businesses to the area and help the local economy grow.Initiatives include a business mentors scheme and presentations, seminars and workshops for anyone who is interested. Both have done a lot to bring self-employed small business owners together, Jason said. He estimates the population of Wanaka is now around 11,000, and with 2,200 GST registered businesses in town, there’s a very high proportion of self-employed people here.When he started the Cube’s Business Mentors Initiative in April, more than 50 people applied for mentoring in the first two weeks."We had to pull our advertising. The demand was huge.” Jason has a pool of 26 mentors available and is always looking for more. They are all volunteers and between them have a huge range of experience.Some people are completely new to business when they apply for a mentor, others are quite experienced. For example, a businesswoman who produces skincare products which she sells around the country wanted to move into the international market. Jason has teamed her up with a mentor who has experience in marketing around the world. He says the breadth and depth of experience and talent in Wanaka is extraordinary."If the Cube model wouldn’t work in Wanaka it wouldn’t work anywhere,” he said. "The town is full of people who excel in all sorts of areas - from intellectual and business acumen to sporting talent.”Jason himself has had a broad and varied career. He works half-time at the Cube and the rest of the time he runs own sports management consultancy business which takes him all over the country. He has also worked in tourism, education, and science and technology.Jason and his wife Irenie decided to move to Wanaka from Christchurch about a year after the earthquakes. "The aftershocks seemed to go on and on and caused us so much stress and anxiety. Luckily I could be flexible with my work and we moved here in 2011.”They and their three children, aged two, seven and 11, are loving living in Wanaka and Jason has no regrets about the move. He’s been his own boss for most of his working life, and the combination of running the Cube and his own consultancy business suits him well.The Cube provides him with lots of contact with local people, and the challenge of providing ongoing business support and advocacy is keeping him busy.Jason is half-way through running an entrepreneur speakers series (with more sessions coming up in October and November) and is developing a Wanaka investment network. He’s also working with Peter Harris, QLDC’s newly appointed economic development manager.An important goal is to help Wanaka develop a diverse and resilient economy, extending far beyond tourism, hospitality and farming."Wanaka’s an exciting place to be,” Jason said.PHOTO: Caroline Harker

Raymond Tiddy will shave off his beard next month to raise money for his uncle Bruce, who is recovering from a life-changing cancer surgery.MADDY HARKERWanaka man Raymond Tiddy plans to shave off his impressive beard - which has been growing for two years - at the conclusion of a fundraising campaign for his uncle Bruce, who is recovering from major cancer surgery.Raymond has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for his uncle."It’s the least I can do to help him out,” Raymond said. "Growing up I had a few uncles but he was the one that was really special to me.”"He is one of those model citizens that has never smoked, lived an active lifestyle, worked to help people, and he’s been hit pretty hard with some really bad luck.”Raymond said his uncle had dedicated his life to working with some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in society. He is well known and respected for his development of alcohol and drug and mental health programmes in prisons and communities across New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia.Bruce has had several operations since 2013 to treat aggressive and invasive skin cancer. The operations involved removal of areas of bone and tissue and have required follow-up chemotherapy and radiation. Remarkably, all surgeries were successful and after each period of recovery he was able to return to his work and live a very full life.Earlier this year however, Bruce was diagnosed with further tumors at the base of his tongue and glands on the right side of his neck. Bruce had to have surgery which involved total removal of his tongue, voice box and the glands in his neck. He now breathes from a stoma in his neck and takes food from a feed tube.Any funds raised by Raymond would go towards Bruce’s recovery and to help him return to leading a full and active life. Because he has previously had radiation therapy, his recovery will be slow and he will have to adjust to a new way of life.Even without the use of his voice, Bruce continues his work in mental health and addiction. He is enormously positive, Raymond said, and is determined to make the most of his situation.This is the second time Raymond has shaved his beard for charity. Two and a half years ago he raised $2,500 for international aid organisation Doctors Without Borders.PHOTO: Supplied

Michelle StewartMADDY HARKERMichelle Stewart’s pop-up shop, The Woven, is the kind of place you want to curl up and spend the whole day in. It’s hidden down an alleyway behind The Cell on Helwick Street, and is full of woollen blankets, ponchos, balls of wool and knitting needles. It’s cosy and homely, and an ode to the principles of Michelle’s business.Michelle hasn’t opted for the popular, muted look for her store or the goods she knits. Instead, she’s inspired by the colours she sees in nature."I try to be led by my landscape,” she said.One of her most popular colours, rain, is inspired by the colour of the sky over Lake Wanaka during a storm."If you take a photo and really look at the colours you see things you aren’t expecting to see.”It’s a worthwhile challenge for the company tasked with bringing the colours she sees to life."I send in landscape photos, mood boards and bits of fabric,” Michelle said. "It was a real case of chafing against the mill.”Michelle has also broken traditional rules with the wool she produces."What I make is bigger and easier to knit with, and doesn’t require a particular type of needle. I want knitting to be accessible.”Michelle has had a varied career before The Woven. She ran a packaging and production business in Auckland, and had a lot of jobs that involved spreadsheets and numbers."I didn’t consider myself a creative person at all,” she said.It was a couple of years after Michelle and her husband and young baby packed up their life in Auckland, quitting their jobs and selling their home, and moved to Wanaka, that Michelle realised her love of knitting was something she could make a career of."I started the business because I wanted to have a sustainable life in Wanaka. I thought to myself, ‘How do I create a business that helps other people make a living too?’”Starting with just $500, it was an ambitious task. But Michelle found that her ideas developed naturally, and her online store gained popularity quickly."I realised I just wanted to knit things that were cooler than what I could get my hands on in other places. I wanted fresh colours and nice products. It rolled into me wanting to create an experience.”Wanaka features heavily in her branding now. With each product she sends to a customer, Michelle sends a little note that explains how the colour was thought up."I tell the Wanaka story in everything I do,” Michelle said.She uses local women as models, and employs local photographer Nadine Cagney to make the images she produces special."I think what makes me successful is that really relatable imagery. I like to use ‘real’ women.”The designers she uses to help create her branding are also from Wanaka."Local business is at the heart of what I do. Everything I possibly can, I do locally. The only part of my business that isn’t made in Wanaka is the wool.”Knitting has been a lifelong love for Michelle, who learnt from her Nana when she was about eight-years-old."It was always a really strong connector for me and her.”She was ridiculed for knitting earlier in her life. "People would roll their eyes at me, say ‘Don’t bring your knitting with you again, please’, that kind of thing.”However, knitting has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years."It’s a really magical time. Young people are getting really into knitting now too.”Michelle is focused on making knitting fun and easy. She doesn’t want people to be intimidated by it, and isn’t afraid to do things differently herself. She often knits without a pattern, and tries to encourage other people, especially women, to have a go."A part of the reason for having my business is definitely to inspire people to knit. I thought to myself, ‘What do knitters need?’ And ‘What can I do that will make it easier?’”"What they definitely don’t need is complicated patterns and rules.”Michelle started Knit Club Wanaka, which is held at Alchemy every Thursday at 5.30pm. Knitters at all levels are invited to come along and share the experience of knitting. Some weeks 50 to 55 people come along."Knitting is a great way to sit down and relax while still creating something,” Michelle said. "There have been studies that have shown that there is a rhythmic cadence to knitting that can calm anxiety.”"With both the knit club and my business I try to inspire, motivate and build people up.”PHOTO: Wanaka App

All aboard! Perks of the competition included sightseeing in Amsterdam on the Heineken boat. MADDY HARKER If you want a well-poured pint, Trout Bar owner Ricky Barbara is your man.Ricky placed second at the Heineken Global Bartender final in Amsterdam earlier this week, competing against 18 of the world’s best bartenders for the title of Heineken Bartender of 2017.Ricky won a free trip to Amsterdam to compete in the finals after topping the regional and then national finals earlier this year.How hard can it be to pour a pint, you may wonder?A Trout staff member explained the steps to pouring the perfect Heineken: Rinse the glass in the beer grates, pour at a 45 degree angle, rinse the top off the foam at the same angle, make sure the bottom of the foam sits on the shoulder of the stars (on the Heineken-branded glass), and serve on a coaster with the Heineken label facing the customer.Other factors come into play at a competition level, the employee said, and you could be marked down for things like having your beer nozzle touch the glass.Heineken employs mystery shoppers to ensure their brews are poured perfectly. It was Ricky’s pour for a mystery shopper that put him into the regional competition that eventually led him to Amsterdam.The competition was held at the Amsterdam’s Heineken factory, and competitors were also treated to city tours and sightseeing.Ricky thanked his staff on Facebook for "holding the fort” at Trout Bar while he enjoyed the perks of his free trip.PHOTO: Supplied

Paul Martin performs at the Poetry Slam NZ Southern Lakes regional finals.LAURA WILLIAMSONWhen it comes to poetry, Paul Martin has some advice: "If you’re ever stuck writing poetry, listen to poetry.”Good point, Paul, and he should know. The 23-year-old recently won the Poetry Slam NZ Southern Lakes regional finals, and will be travelling to Hamilton in November to represent our district at the poetry slam national finals.Slam is a competitive poetry event, at which poets perform spoken works and are judged by audience members in knock-out rounds. It was started by construction worker and poet Marc Smith in 1986 at a reading series in a Chicago jazz club, and is now contested all over the world.A recent arrival in our region (he is currently living in Luggate), Paul grew up in Landing, New Jersey and moved to New York to study Psychology and Italian at Fordham University. The language came from his mother, who is Italian."We had family members who would visit; I spent a lot time time on Google translate with my cousins. I thought, let’s make this easier, so I took Italian in high school and university, and became fluent. You get to know people so much more without the language barrier.”Before coming to New Zealand this winter, Paul was based in Brooklyn, where he was a full-time volunteer with Boys Hope Girls Hope of New York, a non-profit organisation that helps low-income students with housing and tuition; he worked with the kids in the evening and as a barista during the day to supplement his income.He said working with youth was a "tremendous” experience, but the double shifts were definitely wearing him down. When the chance came to visit the Southern Hemisphere for three weeks this year, he decided to take it. And then he decided to stay for a while.Paul’s father, Larry, lost his sight as an adult due to retinitis pigmentosa, and six years ago he took up visually-impaired ski racing. He’d trained alongside some of Wanaka’s well-known para-athletes in Colorado, including Paralympians Adam Hall and Corey Peters, and he decided to come to Wanaka to train - Paul, a former junior ski racer, came along as his guide.Paul had only been here a week when he emailed his boss at the cafe back in Brooklyn to tell him he wasn’t coming back, at least not for while."It was the lifestyle. I’m much happier and healthier here than I was living at home. I wake up and I drive down the street, and I can look at the mountains. I looked at the Brooklyn Bridge every day and it got old on day three – the mountains will never get old,” he said."One of my favorite things to do here, is to go to a place we found on Lake Wanaka and just go and sit. You’d never do that in New York. Everyone would be like, ‘why are you just sitting?’”As for the poetry, it’s all connected. "Something I don’t share face to face much is my struggle with mental health, but I do in my poetry,” Paul said. He was diagnosed with depression and anxiety in 2015, though he says now he can retrospectively see the signs emerging two or three years before that. And while our region’s beauty has been a balm, so have words.He said he wrote his first poem in sixth grade ("to my girlfriend”), but that he really started writing in his first year at university. He got a journal and initially wrote only in Italian, to keep the language up."After that one was full I got another one, which got filled with a lot of dark thoughts,” he said. After his diagnosis he said he got a lot of inspiration from the depression and anxiety he was facing; one of the last pages of that second diary is where he put down his first spoken word poem.He wrote the poem in September of 2015 and performed it in November at an Open Slam event. He won, and got to perform with the Open Slam group on campus at one of their shows. "Then I auditioned for the group and I made it,” he said.Paul said he was inspired early on by the hip hop artist, author and poet George Watsky (he performs as Watsky). "He was the only poet I knew, so tried to write to sound like him. But when I became part of the Open Slam group, I started observing all these people with different styles – I was just a sponge.”His works delves often into issues around mental health, but there are moments of lighter observation too, such as in his work ‘Starbucks 9th St and 3rd Ave’:I can’t even decipher the menu withcafe-mocha frappe smoothies andcaramel iced pumpkin lattes,I’m forced to use Google to translateandwhere did all the beauty go?He said competing in, and winning, the Southern Lakes slam event made his decision to stay feel even more right: "Everything just fell into place.”As for the poems, it’s about more than just the words."Writing was a selfish thing, because I benefitted from it and I benefit from getting up there and speaking, but if there’s one person in the room who connects … I’m starting to realise I can help people with my poetry,” he said."Something that helps me but can also help other people – that is perfect.”PHOTO: Wanaka App

Susan MansonLAURA WILLIAMSONLiving a creative life, Susan Manson said, "is very much cutting the coat to match the cloth. Sometimes you have enough to have fun, sometimes you don’t.”That Susan used a cloth metaphor to describe the financial vagaries of making ends meet working in the arts is appropriate – her current business, Fully Woolly, revolves primarily around creating creatures from used woollen blankets, mostly the tartan ones we all remember from grandparents’ houses and childhood baches.Her most successful products are woollen mounted deer heads, pieces that are, frankly, adorable, just the right mix of realist and whimsical, the sort of art anyone can enjoy.Susan is one of those rare Wanaka locals who really is a local. Her father’s family moved to the area in the thirties. "They were involved in setting up a lot of things,” Susan said, including the library, fire brigade, Guides and a playcentre. Her grandfather built the first swimming pool in town: an outdoor affair, it was at the Dinosaur Park.Susan was born in Cromwell, in what is now the Ripponburn retirement home, which used to be the Cromwell Maternity Hospital. She attended Wanaka District High School, which changed over to Wanaka Area School she was in about third form, a process she called "a bit of a shambles”."They couldn’t get enough teachers, so the principal taught us for a year. He had to supervise through the intercom – we learned to get into trouble quietly.”At the time, there were only three options available at the school: French, typing or technical drawing (graphics). She wanted to do graphics, but was told she couldn’t, because she was a girl. Then she was told she couldn’t do typing, because she was too smart – so French it was, something she laughs about now. "I showed them, I got 30 percent.”Susan said she was always interested in the arts, especially fibre, which in her family "runs in our veins”. Her great grandfather was a Paisley weaver (from Paisley, Scotland, the weavers were famous for their technical and artistic skill) and she has aunts who do embroidery and doll-making. She also gives credit to her high school art teacher, Truda Landreth, who she called an "awesome, motivating teacher.”Susan started out making a lot of different things before deciding she wanted to stick to wool – "I want to be fully woolly” she told her mum, which is where the name of her company comes from.At first, it was all spinning and knitting, Susan explained. She even won a couple of national awards from Creative Fibre (formerly the New Zealand Spinning, Weaving and Woolcrafts Society) for knitwear design.She’s been trading as Fully Woolly for about 15 years, but it was three years ago, when she hit on the idea of the deer, that the business really started to take off – she mostly makes the deer now, plus a few toys, including monkeys, unicorns, bunnies and kiwis.She uses re-purposed blankets and knits for her work, sourced from op shops, TradeMe, friends and donations – a nook in the hallway at her home is piled high with them. "The fabrics have a history and a memory already; it gives them a second life,” she said, adding that people often say they remember a certain pattern from the family caravan, or that they got the same blanket as a wedding present. Susan said the older blankets are also softened down and felted up, so they have a nicer feel than a new fabric might.Susan sells her work online (click on MORE below), at the markets in Queenstown and Wanaka, in 11 shops and galleries from Wellington south (including on Stewart Island), as well as in Wanaka at Ritual and the Coffee Shack.  Each deer has a "blanket name”: an orange tartan one is called Pumpkin Spice, then there’s Envy ("because he’s green with …”), Bluegreen (a blue and green version), Porange (he’s pink and orange), not to mention First Class, who was made from an Air New Zealand first class blanket.Online, she sells her creatures all over the world, from Mexico to England. Once, a French guy based in Greece bought an owl for his girlfriend. Unfortunately, the couple broke up after the owl had left New Zealand. The broken-hearted Frenchman wanted to know if his ex-beloved had received the present, so Susan sent her a postcard, signed by the owl, asking if she had received it, but the woman never replied.About once a month, Susan will also give away a deer for a good cause – recent donations to fundraisers have included Santa’s Grotto in Wanaka and the Invercargill Oncology Nurses fundraiser.As for the growth of her business, "it’s kind of happened to me, not by me,” Susan said, calling it an organic process that involved a bit of blind luck, and hitting on the idea of the deer at the right time.When she started, she said, she bought the D-rings for hanging the deer ten at a time. Now she orders them in batches of 400.The deer are obviously a great idea, but Susan is humble about her success, crediting local support in part for helping her get to where she is, including from her friend Julia Larkin, who has helped her with graphic design, Julia’s husband, who did Susan’s first pro photographs, and a "really supportive community” at the markets – she sold her first deer to a fellow stallholder.Find Susan in Wanaka at the Wanaka Sunday Craft Market, which runs every Sunday from October through April at Market Corner in Pembroke Park.PHOTO: Wanaka App

Billy Barton and a "bundle of fun”.SUE WARDSWelshman Steve ‘Billy’ Barton’s decision to escape the rat race in the UK led to him joining a different rat race entirely, as a predator control specialist in Wanaka - the lead man in predator control team Billy and the Bunny Catchers.But trying to get a handle on all Billy’s activities is almost as hard as getting a handful of his three ferrets."I’ve got my finger in a lot of pies,” Billy said. "This is what my life’s like.”His main role is trapping, shooting, and using dogs and ferrets, working as Phoenix SPB Ltd (tagline Billy and the Bunny Catchers). In this role he’s responsible for around 500 local predator traps from Roys Peninsula to Queensberry, working for DOC and a range of private clients to control rabbits, hares, stoats and feral cats."In its own way it’s conservation,” he said. "You get rid of the rabbits and predators and the wildlife thrives.”Billy is helped by his ferrets (Goldenballs and two unnamed females) and a team of dogs. It took Billy and partner Mary Hunt about ten minutes to work out how many dogs they collectively own. After trying unsuccessfully to add them up by breed and age, Mary finally takes paper and pen and comes up with 16 dogs. The dogs are run in a team of up to nine, and having a few extra means the dogs don't get tired too often. "It's a hard life with all the hunting they do, covering up to 30kms some days,” Billy said.Another of Billy’s businesses is Phoenix Breeding Kennels. He breeds and sells White Shepherds and is working on a line of Welsh Springer Spaniel hunting dogs, aiming to return the breed to their original hunting roots.He’s also the only person in New Zealand working with White German Shepherds for hunting: he said the dogs are biddable, with a good nose.Billy’s also interested in genetic testing of different breeds, and has strong feelings about the damage done to various breeds from Kennel Clubs breeding for ‘desirable’ features.Billy and Mary’s pack includes a Whippet, Labradoodle, Spaniels, a rescued Border Terrier, white German Shepherds and four striking German Shepherd Greyhound crosses (which Billy calls "germ-hounds”) - including 13-year-old Zappa, which he brought to New Zealand from the UK when he emigrated in 2008."I came to New Zealand as a welder with an intention to get into pest control because I liked it,” Billy said. Since then he’s worked as an engineer in Dunedin, spent 12 months eradicating rabbits on Macquarie Island in 2013, and honed his trapping skills in a variety of settings. Billy started part time pest control in Wanaka three years ago, and moved here permanently last June. (He came to housesit for Mary and never left, she said.)Billy was well-known in UK hunting circles for training dogs for rabbiting. He started ferreting 30 years ago: his first ferret, Fred, was trained to a whistle. Now Billy catches wild kit (young ferrets) and trains them. (The ferrets have to be kept under MPI regulations.)He describes them as "little bundles of fun”. Training them not to bite is a priority. So far he’s been bitten "probably about 100 times”, mostly by wild ferrets when trapping new ones to be tamed and trained.With a transmitter on each ferret’s collar he can identify them 16 feet away. Once the ferrets have done their job, usually down rabbit holes, they’ll often head back to their box, Billy said. "They know where their food comes from.”Billy’s knowledge of ferrets led to "another idea”. He had tried to import mink gland oil from America but couldn’t, so decided to try using ferret gland oil, or "stink juice”, to see if it would attract stoats and ferrets into traps. He sent a load of dead ferrets to his ex-partner at the University of Otago; she removed the stink glands and put them in oil.Billy tried the oil and found it worked - as does ferret bedding - to attract predators. Wanaka Otago Regional Councillor Ella Lawton helped him discover another use for the stuff. "She had a problem with rabbits under her deck and I said, ‘do you fancy trying something?’” The rabbits disappeared once the "stink juice” was installed.Now Billy’s supplying the oil and bedding to a variety of groups, including Orokonui Ecosanctuary, DOC and the Wellington Regional Council."I do a bit of an exchange. They send me a bottle of whiskey every now and then. I’ll never be rich,” he said.After meeting Billy it’s not surprising to learn his favourite musician is the innovative Frank Zappa. (Most of his dogs’ names pay homage to Zappa’s music.) Billy seems to share Zappa’s eclectic, experimental approach to life. He segues from telling the Wanaka App about "bagging ferret crap and sending it off”, to describing plans for his latest business, clinical hypnotherapy, in which he has a diploma."I was an anxiety sufferer,” he said. Anxiety, depression and insomnia were the side-effects of medication he took years ago. He suffered for about five years before finding hypnotherapy."I always had a curiosity about it,” he said. "I like the therapy because it’s helping people.”Meanwhile Billy’s helping people in other ways. Conservation Week starts tomorrow (Monday October 16), and this year’s theme is ‘Love your backyard’. DOC Wanaka has been collaborating with local conservationist Kris Vollebregt to start up a backyard trapping programme targeting rats, stoats and ferrets in urban Wanaka. Billy has also contributed his expertise to the scheme, and is happy to advise people on their own backyard trapping."Wanaka is our backyard,” Billy said. "Backyard trapping is as simple as putting a trap in your backyard - just watch your fingers.” (And be careful where you put the traps: Billy has a wealth of knowledge on that, and also suggests people check out http://predatorfreenz.org/the-predators/ for information.)"You’re never far from a rat,” Billy said. "You’d be surprised at the amount of stoats and ferrets out there. The idea is to enhance the wildlife in your back garden by getting rid of the predators.”If you need some help with that, who’re you going to call? A Frank Zappa-loving, Billy Connolly look-a-like, ferreting hypnotherapist. There’s only one in Wanaka: Billy Barton.PHOTO: Wanaka App

4EVER team members Harrison Brown and Paul Wright.LAURA WILLIAMSONThree of the teams racing in today’s Bike Wanaka 10-hour Dean’s Bank race are part of an innovative programme with local origins that is helping young mountain bikers compete at the international level.There used to be two choices for mountain bikers hoping to race World Cups and crack a pro contract: be selected by Cycling NZ, the sport’s national body, or go it alone, as a "privateer”.In mountain biking, a "privateer” is a self-supported athlete who looks after herself or himself on the competition circuit, which as well as coming up with the money to compete, includes managing travel logistics, finding a place to sleep every night, and keeping bikes race-ready.4EVER Racing NZ aims to change this. Launched late last year by local cycling enthusiast Scott Wright, 4EVER is a non-profit race team supported by 4EVER (4E) Bikes from the Czech Republic; the aim is to grow the numbers of Kiwi riders racing at World Cups and World Championships by making it easier for them to get into the game.The team’s current roster includes six-time Motatapu mountain bike race winner and Commonwealth Games cyclist Kate Fluker, former Mount Aspiring College student Paul Wright, as well as local teens Ty Sarginson, Harrison Brown and Campbell Wright.Team manager Melissa Newell, who is based in Wanaka and used to teach Physical Education at MAC, said the idea behind the team is to support athletes with "no national body between sponsors and athletes.”One issue with the mainstream system, which in New Zealand is managed by Cycling NZ, is that a significant portion of funding can get eaten up by administration costs. "Our idea is to make sure the athletes are getting the money,” she said. 4EVER pays for the athletes’ training, travel and the majority of their gear, the only cost for the cyclists themselves is their bikes, which 4EVER provides at a heavily-discounted rate.Melissa said the team offers a new alternative, allowing mountain bikers to work towards going pro without having to either be a part of Cycling NZ’s national performance programme, or to go it alone."We make sure the athletes are eating good food and are not limited by driving in van for 10 hours, then having to sleep in a van, then getting up and competing against the best in the world. It’s just the basics really,” she said. Melissa explained that under current system, athletes who can’t afford to travel to compete internationally and gain the UCI points necessary to win Cycling NZ selection tend to get left behind. "Our idea is to take calculated risks on athletes based on their true potential,” not, she said, based only on race points.The team came about when Scott Wright, who lives in Hawea Flat, was in Europe supporting his son Paul who was competing as an under-19 racer. He ended up meeting a woofer from the Czech Republic who connected him with staff at the 4EVER factory. "Boom, we were launched,” Melissa said.Another difference in 4EVER’s approach is a "complete open door policy” when it comes to finances. At any time, any of the sponsors and athletes have access to the financial records of the team - they can see where money is being spent and why. Currently, the team’s only waged employee is Melissa; the rest goes back to the athletes.This year, 4EVER sent three mountain bikers to compete on the World Cup cross country circuit in Europe, Paul Wright, Rotorua’s Taylor Johnston and Charlotte Rayner from Auckland, and the signing of Kate Fluker, who is gunning for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, is a sign the model is working.As well as racing at Dean’s Bank, the 4EVER cyclists are at a team camp this weekend, with 15 athletes coming to Wanaka from around the country to attend. Mountain Bike New Zealand president Gil Peters spoke to the team, as well as former junior downhill world champion Scarlett Hagen, and riders have been doing gym work at Latitude 44 Fitness, pump track training at Lismore Bike Park, as well as racing today."Trying to create something that actually works for the athlete is paramount,” Melissa said. "It’s about not just benefiting someone else's model.”PHOTO: Supplied

Bex SarginsonBex Sarginson is all heart. That’s what stands out when you meet her, whether or not you know she runs Food for Love and spends more hours a week than she can count coordinating the delivery of home-cooked meals to people in need all around the Upper Clutha.That’s on top of being a wife and mother to husband Karsten Ludwig (a local gasfitter and plumber) and their daughters Bella, 13, and Zoe, 8. And working five days a week as a cleaner.Bex has been the coordinator of Food for Love since July 2016. She and her team provide meals and baking to families or individuals who need a little help. Food for Love was the brainchild of Wanaka’s Louise Carney who started it in April 2016. Bex joined her soon afterwards."I heard about that little boy from Auckland with a brain tumour who was coming down here for a holiday with his family,” Bex said. "I thought, the least we can do is fill the fridge. So I joined Food for Love.”Fifteen months on Food for Love has 70 volunteer cooks who provide a home cooked meal about once a month and 30 more who do baking."If they can, I like my cooks to take the meal they make to the family it’s for. When meals are delivered for the first time there’s often lots of tears,” Bex said. "And I often get messages from my cooks saying it’s the best thing they have ever done.”Of all the people cooking for Food for Love, only one has pulled out. But as more people are referred to help, Bex could do with more help, especially with pick ups and deliveries."All the running around is a bit of a killer.” She would also like to form a committee, to share the load of organisation.Food for Love was runner-up in the Health and Wellbeing section of the Trustpower Queenstown Lakes District Community awards earlier this week, Bex was thrilled."I cried and cried. I was so happy for everyone who helps Food for Love. I want to use the prize money [$250] to have a party for everyone.”Food for Love was runner-up to Baskets of Blessings, a similar organisation based in Queenstown which has been operating for four years.In the bus on the way back to Wanaka after the awards ceremony everyone was trying to think of ways to help Food for Love, Bex said. One result was Gina Dempster of Link Upper Clutha has offered to help Bex find some funding for delivery expenses (namely petrol).Whatever happens, Bex has no regrets about joining Food for Love and becoming the coordinator."It’s incredible to be able to help. There are so many people out there without support who could do with a hand.”People receiving meals from them for all sorts of reasons, but the main ones include sickness, surgery and childbirth. Others need help after a separation or sudden unexpected financial hardship."Just having someone turn up who cares, when you are just home from hospital, or in some kind of trouble, is amazing,” Bex said. "There are a lot of people here with no family around to support them.”People are referred to Food for Love by phone or through the group’s facebook page. No explanations are required.  "All we want to know is how many people we are cooking for and if they have any food intolerances,” Bex said. Some people just get one meal, but if there is a need for ongoing support Food for Love will try to provide it.She has approached some local food businesses for support, and some have come forward, so some food is provided for free, which is always a great help, Bex said. Individuals who have received meals often give something back when they can too. Individuals also often supply fruit and vegetables from their gardens, or other treats. Bex has access to a chest freezer so is able to store food which can be frozen."People are so kind and generous and I’ve met so many amazing people. That’s the best thing about doing this. The people I’ve met.”To volunteer, nominate or learn more, visit the Food for Love Facebook page.PHOTO: Caroline Harker