Nina PowellSUE WARDSNina Powell is often bombarded with questions after she tells people she "works with sexuality” for a living.The Wanaka-based somatic sex coach works with couples and women (single or in relationships), mostly aged from their mid-20s to 60s. Thanks to Skype, she has clients from around the world, and said people are "pretty much the same” no matter where they come from."It always comes down to a desire to connect with another person. I think that’s the core of what people are saying.”Common issues she deals with include loss of (or lack of) sexual desire, women who find their mind is too busy to be in the moment during sex, women with anxiety in their daily living, women who feel they don’t know their own bodies and find sex unfulfilling, and people who can’t communicate with their partner. Also: "People who really want their sex life to be something more: more interesting, more fulfilling, more playful, more exciting.”Women can feel it is an unexplored part of self, Nina said, and changing that can change how they feel every day, making them more confident.Her clients from a religious background have an added challenge, she said. "That is the biggest challenge that I’ve come across, and that is the one I’ve found the most problems transforming with people.” Shame around sexuality can cause "a big hangover” in people’s bodies, she said.Perhaps not surprisingly, Nina comes from a "hippy background”: she grew up in a Coromandel community."I’ve always had an ease and curiosity and exploratory nature with sex,” she said. The subject never shocked her or made her uncomfortable. "When I was 18 my closest friend said to me, ‘you should be a sex therapist’.”Nina and her two younger sisters went to the local primary school, then Nina boarded at Epsom Girls in Auckland. She left New Zealand at the age of 16, flying to London to meet a boyfriend.Always good with numbers, she soon found a job doing accounts. This led to her training to become an accountant, and eventually working at an investment bank.She then studied business and psychology before completing a Masters degree in Human Factors - essentially ergonomics. What she thought would be an interesting design job working directly with people, turned out to be more of an office job.Despite her hippy background, Nina said she "always had this idea of being a professional”, but after seven years working in safety critical industries, the voice in her head whispering ‘I don’t belong here’ became too loud to ignore.She had also embarked on a "massive self-exploration journey” after leaving her partner of nine years. Googling ‘meditation and community’ led her to a conscious clubbing weekend in Dorset, and her first tantric workshop.Nina felt right at home. "It was this really amazing opening, it was like melting something frozen.”She became a workshop junkie, leading something of a double life alongside her be-suited day job. A female Taoist sexuality workshop was another key experience, where Nina learnt ancient practices which she says science is now catching up with.After a couple of years of workshops, Nina studied a programme called ‘Sexological Bodywork’.The more ‘embodied’ she became (through workshops and yoga) the more she realised she didn’t want her manager’s job. She started seeing clients in the UK, and sex coaching became her full-time work. She’s studied other modalities along the way (such as Holistic Pelvic Care ™, Tibetan Buddhist somatic meditation) to support her work.Nina (she had a UK friend who called her ‘Sex Nina’) has a practical approach to these subjects. "They are practical skills about experiencing your body.”"I feel really passionately that we all should have a life with sexual pleasure. And it’s possible for everyone, and I know that so many are not. I’m passionate about it because I’ve chosen it as my work. I feel it’s a very unspoken-about area.”Most people have a sense of longing for something more, Nina believes. "There are these spectacular, exquisite states, that the body is capable of - it can happen standing on top of a mountain. Sex is one route to those states of bliss.”Nina moved to Wanaka two years ago with her partner Sam ("He chose Wanaka, I chose New Zealand”), and she has felt very accepted here.She usually works with clients for three months. "We set an intention for what we want to transform. That’s what I love about this job; it’s coaching, not therapy.”Issues get stuck in our bodies, Nina said. "We can work with the thinking and that can be useful, but unless we work with the body we’re not really changing anything.” Women, in particular, she said, cannot override their bodies.When people come to her there’s an element of "I want what she’s having”, Nina said. "I have such an ease with the body - I can inspire and call people into that space.”While she works with sex, Nina says in a lot of ways "we could just take sex out of the picture”, as many of the tools she teaches are about being in the moment and having your body feel open, relaxed and joyful instead of anxious and fearful."It’s more about relationships and relationship with self. It’s like having this relationship with self that’s truly aligned with who you are. I feel like I’m a guide to people for transforming their life.”But ‘Sex Nina’ is never far away: "I think that everyone should have a really great sex life on their own, and then they should come together to celebrate.”PHOTO: Wanaka App

Rachel Brown at Bikevember PHOTO: SuppliedSUE WARDSRachel Brown credits her standard three teacher Mrs Gamble with the inspiration to be an engaged citizen, but it’s likely Rachel’s strong ethics date back much earlier - she’s been sticking to them for more than 50 years.Rachel, 54, resigned as chair of the Wanaka Community Board (WCB) on Thursday (April 12), after almost five years in the role. She will stay on as a board member for the remainder of this term.She has already packed in enough for several lifetimes, and she’s looking forward to a new phase. The Wanaka App usually sits down to interview people - but had to catch up with Rachel on a roadside at Timaru Creek this weekend, where she was marshalling for the Contact Epic (yes, of course, Rachel - a passionate active transport advocate - biked the 25kms to get there).Born in Upper Hutt and schooled in Auckland, Rachel has strong memories of Mrs Gamble, her standard three teacher at Maungawhau Primary, who taught her how to debate, look at an issue from all angles, and "be an engaged citizen”.After school Rachel studied veterinary science at Massey. In an early show of her "strong ethical stance”, Rachel boycotted physiology labs, concerned they were teaching a disregard for animal life. Summoned by her physiology professor to explain her absences, she explained her position and he thanked her - it was the first feedback he’d had on that part of the course. Some of the labs were later dropped.Rachel won a gold stethoscope for being top of her class - but she decided the veterinary world wasn’t for her. She took the summer off; went to Mt Cook with a boyfriend who introduced her to mountaineering, and went "Wow! No-one told me I could have a lifestyle like this!”It was the beginning of a period of nomadic adventures, including years of mountaineering at Mt Cook; teaching nature programmes on Stewart Island; and scoring an internship at the Outdoor Pursuits Centre (OPC) in the Central North Island - which led to a full time job, with plenty of climbing, tramping, kayaking, ski-touring, caving, and more.In between all the adventures she fitted in a post-graduate diploma in education and a science degree at Canterbury - including geology, Maori language, and ecology. "I loved learning about the environment and sharing our place within it with other people.” During her degree she went to Antarctica for the first time, counting penguins. She struggled with the existence of tourism - and even human habitation - on that continent.In 1995 Rachel decided Wanaka was "the next place I’d like to live”. She moved here to help Steve Henry set up the Otago Polytechnic certificate of mountain recreation - and she also trained to become a mountain guide. In 2000 she and partner Al Wood bought 10 acres of land at Hawea Flat and began designing and building their unconventional straw bale home. But a few years later, everything changed.On August 1 2002 the pair went ice climbing with friends. Al was climbing and Rachel belaying when a large slab of ice fell - Rachel felt it brush her hair as it passed her. Al was fatally injured."I actually felt that day I got shunted into a parallel universe,” Rachel said. "There wasn’t really a lot of point in anything for a while.” Life hasn’t been the same since.Her community rallied around - friends helped by working on the house and she lived with a friend and some flatmates."For me it ripped the passion out of climbing,” Rachel said. She did no more serious climbing or mountain guiding.After a year she applied for a job as camp manager at Cape Hallett in Antarctica - for "escapism”. Rachel had already done three other seasons in Antarctica, and despite believing the continent would be a better place without humans, she was drawn by the "sheer, unsullied beauty, the starkness and rawness”.She got the job: three and a half months on the ice working with one other staff member - the camp mechanic, Gus McAllister, who is now her partner. "We just worked together easily from the beginning,” Rachel said.At the end of the season Gus came to Hawea to help out with the house. They lived in a caravan and worked together, spending the next two summers at Cape Hellett. With a house and garden - the nomadic lifestyle over - Rachel spent a period enjoying "peasant farming” and finding her place in the community.A self-confessed workhorse, Rachel also studied information design, worked for DOC designing interpretation panels, wrote for the Wanaka Sun, joined the choir (Wanakapella) and a women’s theatre group (Flat Out Productions), got into yoga, chaired Wastebusters, and studied Te Reo - earning a diploma.She told then-mayor Clive Geddes she was interested in getting into local politics, and he advised her to get on a council advisory panel, and get involved with her local community association. It was good advice, she said. She joined the Hawea Community Association (HCA) and in 2006 was part of a representative review panel.Giving birth to daughter Winifred in 2009 (on her 46th birthday) began another phase of life, and "opened up a whole other part of the community”.Rachel’s community roles are many - community board member, Upper Clutha Tracks Trustee, Wanaka Alcohol Group chair, Responsible Camping Forum facilitator, Friends of Wastebusters chair, HCA member, active school parent - but when she was elected to the WCB in 2013, she decided to do only two terms. "Then it would be someone else’s turn.”Last year she was mulling over what to do in the "next phase of life”, and decided on teaching. Education has been a lifelong interest, and she has been accepted onto a postgraduate programme for primary school teaching. Again, it’s about making a difference in the community. "And I like to feel I have a bit of wisdom and life experience in me.”Now feels a good time to do it, she said. And she may be going full circle: "I could be the Mrs Gamble who teaches my kids how to debate, and be engaged citizens.”

Isaac Walker on top of Sentinel Peak, Lake Hawea.Running can be for those with a competitive streak; or as a healthy, relaxing pursuit; or a short term desire to get from point A to point B. Not many are passionate about running up mountains - but Isaac Walker is.Isaac has turned his passion for running up and down hills into a Wanaka-based business touring the region’s high country. His company RunAways NZ creates "mountain inspired, trail running holidays” and each summer he guides like-minded Australians and Kiwis, and even the occasional North American or Israeli, on journeys through some of New Zealand’s most spectacular, undisturbed back-country.Limited to 10 runners at a time, each of his five tours takes the better part of a week. Four of the five explore high country trails in this region and the fifth follows an 85km tour of the old Ghost Road, near Greymouth.  "I like to make an adventure out of the activity and create an amazing experience that they can’t do easily by themselves,” he said. "Our tours are stripped back, so it’s just them and the mountain. We often get comments that, at the start, they’re apprehensive they might hold back the group, or be too slow, but we’re not about that. The running has to be for pleasure - it’s a holiday tour not a training camp.”The pilot tour began in November 2016. "As far as I knew no-one was doing running tours in New Zealand and the eight spots sold out quickly,” he said. The six night tour featured two nights each in Lauder, Wanaka and Queenstown, running trails on Department of Conservation high country land."We lucked out with one of the best groups of people. Despite the weather it just all worked perfectly. Our first run was in white-out blizzard conditions, literally minus-7 with wind chill, but we got them to the top and down and everyone survived with smiles from ear to ear.”In fact, the group was so happy with the adventure that six of the eight have already returned for one or more further tours.Ironically, Isaac hasn’t always been a runner. The 35-year-old Kiwi grew up in Dunedin and holidays often included visits to his grandmother in Alexandra. But he didn’t get into running until he moved to Australia where he competed for six years and got involved in off-road trail running.He went from a 10km race to a 100km. "That’s when my eyes were opened to long distance running I never knew existed. I discovered I love the hills, the steep stuff - I’m a little bit nutty in that way.”He gave away competition to rediscover "the thrill of running without a watch; I forgot about pace - just running for the pure enjoyment”.Isaac was in Australia for 12 years, initially working in the tourism industry as a bus driver and tour guide. He’d started out in the industry as a young adult on the boats in Milford and working as a porter in a Dunedin hotel, but his progression into tour guiding came about because of a desire to conquer a personal phobia - public speaking."I sort of jumped in the deep end and I found I loved it. Tour guiding was brilliant. Seeing their enjoyment, their reactions to the environment was gold to me.” It also helped with the motivation to start his own business.It was during a month long holiday back home visiting friends and family Isaac had an epiphany."I got out on the trails and realised what had been in my backyard all this time was amazing. Australia introduced me to running but I never really appreciated how amazing our country was until I returned to the mountains back here.”"I was overwhelmed. Something had changed in me and I felt there was this big attraction to move back home.”"My mum and dad had bought a Bed and Breakfast in Lauder (in the Maniototo) and I thought ‘wouldn’t it be great to bring people here and take them up the mountains’.”The daydream became a business case and he talked a close Australian friend and personal trainer, Will Lind, into joining him as a tour guide. Both are accredited running coaches.The longer tours attract mostly Australians, 80 percent of whom are women aged between 35-50 years. "I didn’t anticipate that,” Isaac said. "But I think the women who sign up are a little bit more courageous, more ballsy, and they like the group situation where they feel comfortable and secure and are not afraid to put themselves out there.”The original company, RunAways NZ has spawned RunAways Wanaka which caters for a wider range of individual fitness levels by providing day trips hiking, running and family tours.Isaac and his son Josh on Josh’s first overnight hike to the Fern Burn hut.These individually crafted day trips might include a hike up Mt Isthmus or across the Skyline trail (up Roys Peak, across Mt Alpha, and down to the Cardrona Valley). "We’ll go up early to catch the sunrise, getting them up before the crowds,” Isaac said. "It’s a good opportunity to educate and inform visitors about the high country, to talk about conservation and enjoying the environment, packing everything out that we brought in.”The Wanaka-based business means Isaac can stay involved with his family, wife Sue, son Josh (who starts at Hawea Flat school next term) and young Scarlett.When not running guided tours, Isaac is currently working as a operational maintenance jack-of-all-trades at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds. But he hopes to return to rostered employment as a firefighter. A qualified and experienced firefighter, Isaac has applied for a position as a Rescue Fire Fighter at Queenstown Airport."Firefighting is in my blood a little bit,” Isaac said. "And that would be my dream; to be employed as a fireman and work my business around that.”PHOTOS: Supplied

Lizzie with one of her pieces, ‘Smoked Chicken’. PHOTO: Wanaka AppMADDY HARKERLizzie Carruthers wanted to be a farmer for as long as she can remember.Born and raised on a farm in South Otago, she was helping her Dad on his farm from a very young age."I was the youngest of four girls and my father still calls me ‘Jim’. I was a total tomboy and wore a lot of brown corduroy.”Lizzie still farms full-time, now on a farm she owns with husband Phill Hunt in Maungawera Valley, but the brown cords are long gone.She’s still involved in her parents’ farm too, as are her parents. "Dad’s still there doing it at 87,” she said. "This year he was ridging the swedes still.”Lizzie and Phill’s daughters (Hilary,18, and Fiona, 13) like farming too, Lizzie said, and Fiona even learned to negotiate her wage when she was employed by her parents to help on the farm last summer. "She was very good at it. Doing her bit for lessening the wage gap and equal opportunities,” Lizzie said.While it could have been seen as unusual to have a young girl so keen on farming in a rural Otago community 40-plus years ago, it was never an issue for Lizzie."My father never thought I couldn’t do it.”After completing school, Lizzie headed straight to Lincoln, where she completed a Diploma in Agriculture. As one of ten or so girls in the course, Lizzie stuck with it when many didn’t: the course had a 50 percent drop-out rate for the women in the course.And after university, when many people go on a regular OE, Lizzie did hers farming style, taking an "agriculture exchange” to Britain.A man called Tony Hawkins, whose farm Lizzie had worked on during her exchange in 1987, rang her just a couple of weeks ago as he was visiting New Zealand.Wondering how he remembered her - from a three-day stint so long ago - Lizzie said it might have been that she drove a tractor during her stint on his farm."It must have been quite unusual to see a girl driving a tractor then,” Lizzie said.Lizzie met Phill long before they became an item - she’d had a summer job in Wanaka pumping petrol at the gas station and had met him during that time. They went on to flat together, travelled overseas at "virtually the same time” but didn’t cross paths, and it was when Lizzie returned to New Zealand and resumed farming with her father while Phill was in Wanaka, that the two eventually got together."There was quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing,” Lizzie said, laughing. "We’d meet in Roxburgh at the halfway point.”The pair eventually got hitched in 1993, and Lizzie moved to Maungawera to Phill’s farm, which has been owned by his family since April Fool’s Day 1929.Lizzie has enjoyed art for as long as farming, although it wasn’t something that ran in the blood - she’s the only artist in her family.If she had her time again, she might just have gone to art school, she said, but luckily the arts scene in Wanaka keeps her busy and engaged."When I came to the Upper Clutha there were so many opportunities to learn and so many courses.”Lizzie’s just finished an annual art exhibition with friends - "it went really well” and tried her hand at etching with Ron McBurnie at an Autumn Arts School course.She started with life drawing, and now finds herself painting mostly farm animals, a hybrid of her two interests.She’s always reliable for an amusing caption: a recent series called ‘No Animals Harmed’ features a hatted duck (‘Tall Duck and Handsome’) a donkey (‘Don Key’) and a concerned looking dog in a shirt and tie (‘Worrying About the Sheep’).‘Don Key’, from Lizzie’s recent exhibition.Ideas come from her husband, friends and family, and a bit of brainstorming, she said.Always ready for a laugh, Lizzie (a keen shooter) spent ANZAC Day at the local gun club with a group of female friends, dressed to the nines in period dress. "Practise for duck shooting,” Lizzie said.With two daughters and a farm to run, it can sometimes be hard to find time to paint but Phill is reliable in telling her when he thinks it’s time for her to do some painting, and take a break.Farming has changed over the years, Lizzie said, with productivity going up significantly between 1990/1 and 2011/12. In this period, dairy increased by 163 percent, beef and veal by 22 percent and lamb dropped 9 percent (but with 45 percent fewer sheep).The increased productivity can be put down to a couple of things. One of them is more sophisticated technology and techniques. "Simple things like having a conveyor, we can now inoculate [process] all our lambs in one day when before it might have taken us three.”The second reason is need, Lizzie said. "Because of the prices, people are farming smarter. It’s price driven too.”Lizzie and friends dressed up at the gun range on ANZAC Day. From left: Lizzie, Vicki Cusick, Vicky Sanford, Rosa Stackhouse-Miller and Sharlene Nyhon. PHOTO: SuppliedWith winter arriving there is more time for art for Lizzie, and it’s something she can spend hour upon hour doing."I think you go some other place, and you look up and the day is somehow gone.”"I hope everyone can find the time to do stuff like that - it’s important for mental health. Or even better, have a job they love. Life is just too short to not do what you love.”PHOTOS: Supplied

Liz Breslin PHOTO: SuppliedSUE WARDS"I don’t think I’m particularly high-output,” says Liz Breslin: writer, poet, playwright, columnist, editor, MC, performer, coordinator of Mount Aspiring College’s Students in the Community programme, and author of one of New Zealand’s recently chosen best 25 poems of the year."I’ve always thought ‘if you want something done: do it’,” Liz told the Wanaka App. "I just find the time. If I get an idea I have to work on it or I lose it - and I lose way more ideas than I work on.”It helps that her family are "very kind” to her, and she meditates when she remembers - something she learned from fellow poet and rapper Dominic Hoey.Her work isn’t all zen though. Liz reckons it’s cool to use art as a response to issues. "It’s the opposite to having trolling as a response to things,” she said. Case in point would be her "Dear Val” poem, published in response to a popular online poem addressed to Jacinda Ardern in the lead-up to last year’s election. It was pointed, political, and entertaining.It’s fair to say Liz’s writing covers a wide gamut. It has appeared in Landfall, Cafe Reader, the Listener, the New Zealand Herald, the Press, the Dominion Post, Takahē, OH baby!, on magazine, Kiwi Diary, Blackmail Press and Bravado. She’s had short stories developed for Radio New Zealand National. Her regular column, Thinking Allowed, runs every second Saturday in the Weekend Mix section of the Otago Daily Times.She performed a spoken word piece and a collated-audience-response poem at the 2016 TEDx Queenstown, came second-runner-up in the 2014 New Zealand National Poetry Slam, and came third in the 2016 Charles Causley Trust International Poetry Prize. Her plays The Last Call Centre EVER in New Zealand, It’s Your Shit, and Losing Faith, have been staged in Wanaka, and her first pantomime, Cindy and the Villanelles, was performed here last December.Her first collection of poems, Alzheimer’s and a spoon, was published by Otago University Press last year, and one of the book’s poems, The Lifestyle Creed, has just been selected as one of the best 25 poems in the country this year, appearing in the annual Best New Zealand Poems published by the International Institute of Modern Letters. The 25 poems were selected by poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh to show the vitality and range of current writing.Born in the UK, "up north - rugbyville”, Liz spent her childhood in Liverpool and Bedfordshire, but "always knew I was going to get the heck out of there”.Her background was a little bit conservative, she said, and the University of Sussex in Brighton, which she attended after school, felt like "the whole world”. She studied English, with a focus on American studies, but - characteristically - the best part was she was able to study a bit of everything: opera, Japanese theatre, Greek tragedy, and more.Her world expanded further when she went to Japan on a JET teaching scheme for recent graduates, and even further when she trained as an educational tour guide and began touring the world (mostly Europe). Tours usually comprised "London, Paris - and somewhere else”, Liz said.She was "a bit of an itinerant”, and even had a stint in the Antipodes when her firm opened an office in Australia, post 9/11. She also taught English as a foreign language there, and met a well-travelled friend who told her the only place he would consider raising kids was New Zealand. Liz noted it, and also noted the "the very attractive new guy” in the office back in London where she was planning and running tours in Europe and the middle East.That guy - Kiwi Jimmy Rimmer (now Liz’s husband) - returned to New Zealand a few years later. Liz went too. They set off from Auckland on a road trip of the country. Liz remembers driving towards Wanaka and coming to a road sign (no longer there) which announced Wanaka and Hawea. "I had this sense of coming home,” she said.They’ve been here ever since. She got a job at Cinema Paradiso and soaked up Wanaka. They tried to move to Auckland when Liz became pregnant (twins Lauren and Dylan are now 14), but Liz insisted they return to see Woolly Man (Paradiso owner Calum MacLeod and Simon Rasmussen’s superhero spoof film).She has spent time as a quality assurance assessor for Tourism NZ, and as a Lord of the Rings tour guide in this region. "It’s all stories - isn’t it? Whether you’re in a tour bus or writing a poem - it’s all stories.”Liz, Laura Williamson and Annabel Wilson onstage at Good Rotations on Friday evening. PHOTO: SuppliedLiz joins fellow Wanaka poets Laura Williamson and Annabel Wilson on stage this weekend for a whistle-stop tour of some of their favourite southern haunts: Wanaka (Friday night at Good Rotations - described by one audience member as "inspiring and world-class”), Dunedin (last night at Inch Bar), and Lyttleton (tonight at the Hellfire Club). The three met when Liz and Laura ran Poetic Justice Wanaka.Liz reckons she’s always been a poet. She loves it. "Every word matters, so you can’t be sloppy with it. It’s such a great vehicle because everything you do with it matters. It’s the tightest feat of engineering with words.”She was "super happy” to be chosen in the Best Poems list. "Here, we don’t come from anywhere big. That I even got noticed was like, wow.” Some of the other poems in the list were "next level”, she said. "To think I stack up against them: that’s huge.”Click the website below to read The Lifestyle Creed - one of New Zealand’s best poems, a cut-and-paste of the Catholic Nicene Creed and nutritional advice found on a blog about Alzheimer’s. That mash up seems so apt for Liz - a well-travelled polymath, right at home in Hawea Flat.

Claire IredaleWanaka 2017 CUBE Scholarship winner Claire Iredale is setting a precedent for pure, ethical and sustainable spirits with the first public release of her Wild Diamond Gin and Vodka next week.The Wanaka naturopath and herbalist has a craft micro-distillery manufacturing botanical spirits made from glacial water and foraged organic botanicals.Since winning the $2,000 scholarship in October last year - a package provided by Chorus and supported by the Cube and Ignite Wanaka Chamber to help encourage entrepreneurial spirit - the distillery has forged ahead with setup through to manufacturing and is now starting distribution.Wild Diamond has a philosophy of connecting people with plants, and a business ethic of sustainability. Claire believes the story behind her product will help educate people about the importance of our region’s biodiversity."We are readily losing places in Wanaka, and across the world where pure, non-chemical affected, nature grown plants can be accessed freely,” Claire said. "We need to realise the importance of our biodiversity, the purity of our land, before it is all changed into something we cannot get back.”CUBE Business Development Manager Jason Watkins said he enjoyed watching Claire reach the public release stage with help from the scholarship and additional provided resources."It was great to see Claire and Wild Diamond carrying on the momentum from last year and taking product to market, which was very exciting” he said. "It was also heartening to see Claire engage with local mentoring and take advantage of the broad range of support provided by the scholarship package."Jason said another Entrepreneur Scholarship by the CUBE and Ignite Wanaka had been created and the winner would be announced shortly. Claire has time and effort into the set up of her distillery and sustainable business practice, opting for only renewable energy to power her production, bottles chosen for their lighter impact on shipping fuel consumption, glass closures to minimise plastic use, and recycled packaging. She also has a focus on minimal waste production: since manufacturing began in January, less than 50 litres of non-recyclable/non-reusable waste have been produced from the distillery..Claire said everything is harvested "mindfully and by hand” to ensure the best flowers, berries, leaves and stems are harvested at the right time and contain the best flavors and characteristics. The aim is to keep the impact on the region and the planet as minimal as possible, she said.Cork Bar will host a public tasting event at Queens Birthday weekend.PHOTO: Supplied

Tony Brown with his own wine produced under the Pinky and Perky label. PHOTO: Wanaka AppDIANA COCKSSay hello to Tony Brown - no, not that Tony Brown - Wanaka’s Tony Brown. He’s occasionally been mistaken for the well-known rugby-player-turned coach - not that they look alike, it’s just the name."He’s about the same age as my son,” Wanaka’s Tony Brown said. "I get introduced and people think they’re going to see "the” Tony Brown and they end up with me.”Wanaka’s Tony Brown is one of those guys with a recognisable name who has worked long and hard behind the scenes to help the Wanaka community grow.Now at 65 years of age, and with a health scare behind him, he’s chosen to retire from his position as director of sales and marketing for Willowridge Development Ltd.Tony has been involved in sales of 15 new subdivisions in Wanaka over the past 17 years and for him it’s all about relationships. He said he’s involved with sales of sections from the concept stage right through to settlement date."Because we sell our own product [it’s not sold by real estate companies] we have the knowledge and are able to build a relationship with a buyer from day one.”And in the case of subdivisions like Timsfield and Luggate, many of those purchasing sections were first home buyers. "There are a lot of first home buyers who need their hands held through that process because they’ve never done it before and it’s quite scary for them,” he said.Tony also derives enormous pride from the transformational process of developing a subdivision. "When I drive through a subdivision I think ‘gosh when we started here there was absolutely nothing’ and now it’s just transformed.”Tony and his wife Pam moved to Wanaka in 2001 and he worked for Bob Robertson, of Infinity Investment Group, for seven years before joining Allan Dippie at Willowridge Developments for the next nine years."I’m very fortunate in that I’ve had one of the best jobs in Wanaka and I’ve worked for probably two of the most interesting, clever and respected guys.”"Wanaka’s been very lucky with the developers they’ve had. With Bob Robertson and Allan Dippie they both cared passionately for the town; they weren’t just in it for the dollar.”Asked about his favourite subdivisions, he decides Far Horizon and Three Parks are his two top choices. "Far Horizon was one of the best developments Infinity did. A very, very smart subdivision for its time.”"But the most exciting is Three Parks. Allan has been working on Three Parks for 13 years now and with the Rec Centre, the new Aquatic Centre, the school, Mitre 10, the supermarket and another large retailer as anchor tenants they will really make it a destination,” Tony said. An early childhood centre and tertiary educational campus have also been identified for Three Parks as well as residential housing. Tony said he’s always enjoyed the variety of processes for selling and marketing property, ranging from silent auctions and ballots to online auctions and tenders. He recalls the online auctions for Infinity’s Pegasus Bay development, north of Christchurch, where in an online auction the team sold 400+ sections in one day. "It was very systemised; everyone knew what they were doing, when to do it; how to do it. We had good fun; those were good days.”In some ways it seems a pity to be stepping down at such an exhilarating time. "It’s an exciting time for the company and it will be great for someone who can enjoy the ride for the next 15-20 years.” Tony and Pam Brown. PHOTO: SuppliedHis 30 years in sales and marketing of real estate did leave him some time for other pursuits, however. Not long after he and Pam arrived in Wanaka they joined the Rotary Club of Wanaka. Pam was the first to join. "She used to head off to Rotary and my brother and I would go out for a meal but after a while we thought ‘this is crazy’ so we joined her. It’s been a great way to meet people.”Now with 70+ members, Rotary has played a pivotal role in many community projects, including the establishment of Rotary Park at Glendhu, the design and construction of the Wanaka town signs - "People are taking photos in front of them all the time” - and the erection of the children’s playground on the lake’s foreshore near Stoney Creek."I found that playground on trade-me and we purchased it and relocated it to the waterfront near the Stoney Creek car park,” he said. "It’s nice to see it so well used.”Tony has been president of the Rotary Club of Wanaka, Assistant District Governor for Rotary and the recipient of a Paul Harris Fellow for an outstanding contribution to the community - "quite an honour to receive that”, he said. Achieving community projects through Rotary has "given me a great deal of satisfaction.”Tony plans to continue with Rotary during his retirement. He said he would like to see Rotary expand into humanitarian projects in the South Pacific. "Things are tough over there,” he said. "Maybe we could get a group of us and head over there.”As retirement beckons he’s also hoping to spend more time playing golf, picking up the tennis racket again, and going exploring with Pam in his new Jayco Silverline caravan.He’s also looking forward to producing more wine from his vineyard on Aubrey Road. Four couples started with baby steps in the wine industry eight or nine years ago and now bottle their own. They do almost everything from pruning to harvest and last year created a ‘Pinky Rose’ and a ‘Perky Pinot’. "We’ve grown a bit of everything and we’re experimenting in a white pinot this year,” Tony said. "I get about 12 boxes of wine a year.”Then, of course, there’s his barrel of whisky gently aging at the Cardrona Distillery, with plenty of time yet to be enjoyed in retirement.

Lee BallSUE WARDSIt's the number one fear (up there with death and spiders) - glossophobia, the fear of public speaking - and Wanaka's Lee Ball not only knows how to beat it, she also believes standing up and telling your story has the power to change your life.Lee has plenty of stories of her own. A Christchurch girl with an arts degree, who had six children before she was 33 - she's not short of material. But as a teen, Lee was afraid of public speaking. "At some point we shut down and start being self conscious. I couldn't even speak up in groups.”In the 1980s, with three young children, Lee somehow found the time and energy to study massage therapy, join a gym, and train as an aerobics instructor ("g-string leotard, the works”). She saw Toastmasters as a way to help her with her public persona (and provide a weekly reprieve from her busy household).Lee attended Toastmasters regularly for four years, overcoming her fear and excelling in competitions, before she and two others set up their own business, Dynamic Communication, training mainly corporate clients in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland.After a few years, Lee realised what she loved about the work was coaching people on their limiting beliefs about themselves. That led her to studying a life coaching diploma, which is where she met long time Wanaka/Hawea resident Tanette Hickey. The course required participants to "do their own stuff” about their lives, Lee said, which played a large part in her leaving Christchurch – and her marriage – soon after. Visiting Tanette in Hawea, Lee woke up one morning and thought: "I need to live here”.Having dreamed of mountains and snow, and with a yearning to try mountain-biking, Lake Hawea was Lee's "healing place”. She and Tanette set up Shine Transformational Retreats, and they still run the occasional retreat, when their own interests and growth coincide.But finding work in Wanaka is a challenge many can relate to. After dabbling briefly in real estate, Lee noticed a job advertisement for massage therapists at Oakridge and decided to apply. She's built her own massage therapy business over the past eight years, and also runs courses and private coaching on public speaking through Lee Ball Communications.She has worked with Mount Aspiring College, and run private youth coaching and community courses with people aged from their early 20s to late 60s. "Some people come because they have a work presentation, some because they've had a fear all their lives and are sick of it. Everybody has a different reason.”Lee describes her courses as "challenging and transforming”, and says her teaching has evolved over the years."I'm spending much more time on people's stories. You need personal experiences for speeches to come alive, and I've got into more inspirational speaking,” she said. "It's speaking from your heart rather than speaking to a formula or checklist.”Lee said crafting a really good story, which will grab people's attention, needs drama and suspense. "The story needs to take the audience on a journey, through the words, your eyes, your pace. You want the listener to feel like they're right there in the story.”That's where Smashing Stories comes in. Lee's son Luke has been organising 'true stories told live' sessions in Santiago, where he was based until recently and, now Luke’s back in New Zealand, the two decided to organise one in Wanaka. The sessions are inspired by an organisation called The Moth, which has a mission to promote the art and craft of storytelling and celebrate the diversity and commonality of human experience.These local stories are an antidote to the manufactured stories which surround us in advertising and the media, Lee believes. "We want to feel connected. I think there's a real, big disconnect right now. But when we share these stories we see each other and it just makes us connected.”She laughed so much at the first Smashing Stories session, "it was such a relief”."It's like storytelling around a fire. The barriers come down and we can allow ourselves to be who we are, without the props.”People come along and share a 5-6 minute story based on a theme. Lee advises people who plan to speak to practice and keep their story to the time frame. "I'm trying to create something that unites people, and you can come away feeling uplifted.” She and Luke plan to hold the sessions around New Zealand, with Wellington next."Sometimes people think ‘I don't have a good story', but you can create a good story about anything – you can create a good story about going to New World,” she says. "I love seeing people reveal their moments in life when they've learnt something. When people share their stories it actually heals them. It's therapeutic, powerful for the audience, and sometimes just entertaining.”This is more than her life's work; Lee believes "in the power of storytelling to change people's lives”.The next Smashing Stories session will be held at Gin & Raspberry on Tuesday June 12, 7-9pm. The theme is 'It was time' – decisive moments, personal resolutions, being pushed to the edge. Lee's next 'Speak with Confidence' weekend workshop starts on Friday June 17. Click MORE below for more information.PHOTO: Supplied

Annabel LangbeinFood writer Annabel Langbein has been made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit (ONZM) for her services as a food writer in the Queen’s Birthday 2018 Honours List.Annabel has a holiday home in Dublin Bay where she spends as much time as she can. "I just love it down here,” she told the Wanaka App last year.Annabel has self-published 25 cookbooks and starred in three seasons of the internationally successful cooking programme ‘Annabel Langbein: The Free Range Cook’, which has screened in 94 countries.After an early career as a food columnist, Annabel was food writer for Cuisine for 11 years and later food editor for Grace magazine. In 1988 she self-published her first book of recipes, ‘Annabel Langbein’s Cookbook’, and has since risen to become one of New Zealand’s highest selling authors of all time. Her 1997 book ‘The best of Annabel Langbein’ has sold more than half a million copies internationally and her books have topped NZ best seller lists.Overall, she has sold more than two million books through her self publishing imprint, Annabel Langbein Media. In 1991 she established the Culinary Institute of New Zealand, a specialist food marketing consultancy through which she has undertaken marketing and media campaigns for food manufacturers, retailers, and exporters.Annabel has promoted New Zealand food overseas as an ambassador for Trade NZ. She was a director of Kapiti Cheeses for seven years, and is a member of the Sustainability Council of NZ.  Annabel is a firm believer in enjoying home-grown, home-cooked food with friends and family."It connects us, even if only in a small way, to the rhythms of nature. Wandering around my garden at the end of a busy day to find something to serve for our evening meal is incredibly satisfying. So, too, is the daily ritual of setting the table, lighting some candles and sitting down together to enjoy simple, freshly cooked food.” Anyone familiar with her television series will have seen Annabel’s Dublin Bay garden on the show.Although she has spent 20 plus years working professionally in a kitchen, Annabel is very much a self-taught cook. She learned a lot from her mother Anne, a home science university graduate, and her father Fred, who took great pride in his large vegetable garden."I never formally learned to cook (aside from a couple of residential courses at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York), choosing instead to study horticulture at Lincoln University in New Zealand. Understanding how plants grow is incredibly useful when it comes to cooking.”Annabel’s honour comes in a list which makes the Topp twins Dames Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and former Prime Minister Bill English a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.The New Zealand Royal Honours system provides a way for New Zealand to thank and congratulate people who have served their communities and to recognise people's achievements.PHOTO: tvnz.co.nz