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Alpine playground lost in time

St Arnaud may be an unassuming village, but it’s full of small town charm with stunning vistas in every direction, writes Stu Hunt.

If the town of St Arnaud were named after a patron saint it might be apt given the almost divine beauty of its surroundings. In reality it got its title from Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud, a French general in the Crimean War and a ruthless commander in French President Louis Napoleon’s army during his coup d’etat.

Given that he is said to have once sealed up a cave and entombed 500 Arab tribesman alive, there was little about him that was saintly or divine.

But three towns have been named after him, one in Victoria, Australia, one in Algeria and one at the gateway to the Nelson Lakes National Park.

That small alpine township with a population of just over 100 people sits at the northern end of Lake Rotoiti, west of the mountains of the St Arnaud ranges and 90km southwest of Nelson.

The town is popular as a starting out point to explore the lake and mountains, but linger long enough to talk to some of the locals and it becomes clear that there’s a lot more to St Arnaud than simply being a launchpad.

Certainly its residents are happy that it seems destined to remain frozen in time.

Department of Conservation operations manager John Wotherspoon has lived in the area for 20 years and says the village’s proximity to wilderness areas, and the accessibility of it all, is definitely a big part of its appeal.

With the national park threaded through parts of it, he says St Arnaud still has that wilderness feel from being one of the few places featuring a forested lake with people right next to it.

‘‘You literally walk out your door and straight into the forest.

‘‘It’s a place where you can go tramping by putting on a pack in the house, walk out and go for a week and walk right back to the house. There’s not a lot of places left you can do that.’’

Wotherspoon says any change that has taken place has been constrained.

‘‘There’s so much public conservation land around that any development is going to push further out of town and that will keep it special.’’

From a biodiversity perspective, he says the work that’s been done over many years of trapping and looking after the wildlife means there are low rat and stoat numbers.

‘‘There’s around 10,000 hectares of trapped area with the 5000ha we look after and the same again by the Friends of Rotoiti community conservation group. That’s a big area.

‘‘We know that kiwi are moving up the valley too, so there’s a lot to be proud of, really.’’

He says being an alpine environment the seasons are very distinct and you have to deal with the cold.

‘‘It’s all 600m above sea level or higher, so you don’t get any lemon trees. We rely on our friends and family on the lowlands to keep us stocked.’’

Pete Rainey owns a bach in St Arnaud and is one of the driving forces behind the town’s Classic Boat Museum and the annual NZ Antique & Classic Boat Show held on the lake.

Rainey started the show in 1999. He owned a classic boat and realised there wasn’t really much happening for small boats in the country. Now it’s grown to the point they get about

100 boats a year, from locations from Invercargill to the North Island. ‘‘Part of the success is that people make the huge effort of dragging a boat around the country on a trailer; they want to go somewhere special and Rotoiti is that special.’’

The museum and storage facility was built in 2014 and is now home to

35 boats. Among them are historic race boats like Peter Knight’s Belair III and a 1963 Italian Riva runabout called Jacqueline, which is rumoured to have been owned by Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis.

Rainey says he would like to grow the scene and it’s beginning to get a reputation as a national centre for classic boats of that scale – boats on trailers.

‘‘There are other shows around the country but nothing on this scale and part of it that has really grown is the classic racing scene. It’s hugely popular in the States and beginning to be billed now as the more affordable option.’’

Rainey says there is room for expansion on the museum site and they have toyed with the idea of a summer school in boat building.

‘‘It generates a lot of activity around the country so there are people in sheds all over New Zealand getting ready for next March. It has been a catalyst for people building boats.’’

It has also been getting interest internationally, with classic boat journalists coming from England and the United States.

‘‘In the long term, if international travel picks up we’ll start really seeing a build-up of people coming. It will continue to keep building.’’

Rainey says when the Kaiko¯ ura earthquake hit in 2016 the traffic through Rotoiti went from 400 car movements a day to 5000. Road workers were hiring baches.

‘‘We noticed a real pick-up in the number of people just coming to have a look at the lake and the museum and stuff like that.’’

But he says with Kaikoura opening back up and Covid, ‘‘you can lie down in the middle of the road in the middle of the day’’. The spinoff has been that tourism numbers remain high.

‘‘The word has spread so on any given day there’s cars down on the foreshore. Before you might be the only person on the lake. People are seeking it out much more than they used to. Certainly the tourism potential is quite high.

‘‘I hope to live there one day.’’ Russell Ferens moved to St Arnaud in January, 2006.

He went to work as an instructor at the Outdoor Education Centre before taking over as the director two years later.

Ferens said he moved for the job but he and his wife knew the location was somewhere they wanted to raise their three children.

The lodge underwent a major renovation last year. Ferens says it’s not that it was bad beforehand but what it offers now is vastly different to 2006.

The lodge’s primary business is school camps but it’s also available for private hire to groups who need a big facility to accommodate their needs.

Ferens says the thing he loves the most about St Arnaud is the lack of people.

‘‘It’s quiet. It’s growing rapidly but it will always be a small village, it’ll never be another Queenstown because of the amount of available land to develop around it. Everywhere you go it’s right on the national park. From Nelson and Blenheim it’s only an hour and a quarter drive and it’s up in the mountains.

‘‘In winter there’s skiing at Rainbow, in summer lakes to swim in and rivers to paddle on and tramping and hunting all year round. And there’s good people. The community is tight and it’s a pleasure to be part of.’’

Ferens says the proliferation of holiday homes in the town means there are a lot of buildings hidden all through the bush but not many people.

The town has the basics – a strong volunteer fire brigade, a school from new entrants to year 8 and a small shop for fuel and bits and pieces. There’s the Alpine Lodge – which is a restaurant, bar, hotel and cafe. As far as major infrastructure goes the only commercial building built in his time has been the new cafe and the classic boat museum.

Ferens says it’s a real playground in terms of active recreation.

In addition to some of the best tramping in New Zealand, boating, hunting and a skifield 45 minutes from the village there’s also a burgeoning mountainbiking scene with Teetotal, Beeby’s Knob and Redhills.

‘‘The Nelson Orienteering club has a lot of permanent trails set up, from mum, dad and the kids having a wander around through to the competitive players.’’

Hamish Simpson describes the area as old world New Zealand mixed with the European Alps.

Simpson owns and operates Lake Rotoiti Water Taxis.

He took over the business nine years ago after running a part-time water taxi business in the Marlborough Sounds.

‘‘When this came up for sale they liked me and I liked them and the rest is history, really.’’

In a normal year Simpson takes around 3000 passengers, which is typically a mix of 50 per cent Kiwis and 50 per cent overseas tourists.

‘‘When I first started it was all trampers and a few fishermen, most customers predominantly trampers. It’s changed. Now half my passengers get taken up the head of the lake and walk back.’’

Simpson says the thing he loves most about St Arnaud is the people, who he describes as all being on the same page. ‘‘A few years ago my truck broke down and I had about four phone calls offering to tow my boat down to the lake.’’

Simpson says if he sits down at the jetty he’ll probably get three or four locals come out and have a yarn.

‘‘If I go to the store and grab a coffee, chances are I’ll bump into someone and we’ll have a yarn and that’s kind of what it’s like up here.’’

Simpson describes it as being people’s happy place, with the appeal of leaving busy lives behind and coming to a world that’s a bit simpler.

‘‘Even if you’re mildly outdoorsy, it’s a fantastic place.

‘‘In the middle of winter, I can do a boat trip in the morning and whip up the mountain to go snowboarding in the afternoon.’’

Mike Allen is the principal of the Lake Rotoiti School, which has two teachers and 25 pupils from new entrants to year 8. ‘‘It makes for a nice teacher-student ratio. Behaviour is not an issue.’’

Despite its diminutive size the school punches above its weight in terms of facilities and opportunities. The big playground area sports a large adventure playground and the recent addition of a heated swimming pool.

Allen says students get to go skiing for seven weeks a year, making most of them competent in the snow.

The school has four Optimist sailboats and they hold training sessions in the pool and on the lake.

They get involved in projects like adopting a back country hut to help restore it and working with DOC on wildlife projects.

He uses the term ‘‘free range kids’’. Allen says the roll is up and down, partly because a lot of the people moving to St Arnaud are older couples without families.

‘‘It’s just a case of letting people know that your families can do everything from here. We have wifi, there’s evening activities and daytime activities for adults. We’ve got yoga, we’ve got pilates, karate, badminton.

‘‘People just don’t understand how easy it is to go from here to things you need to go to and what is on offer here.’’

Allen says it’s getting more widely known with social media. ‘‘It’s the best kept secret that everybody knows about . . . I’m here for a lifestyle choice and I like the community.’’

Ed Shaw is a bowyer. He makes bows for archery or hunting. He’s been in St Arnaud for 25 years.

Originally Ed and his wife, Nicky, chose to move there because the land was affordable.

A plumber by trade, Ed is now working fulltime on Bullock Road Bows.

He was originally into rifle hunting but a friend was into bow hunting so he thought he’d give it a go. ‘‘I went into the shop and said I need a bow for hunting. They said I’d need a compound bow so I got one of those.’’

One of the clips broke so he went into Trinders and asked about it and they referred him to a bow hunter who was into longbows and recurve bows.

‘‘He very graciously said ‘come round to my place and I’ll show you what a bow should look like’. So I went and from that point I went from compound bows to recurve bows to a fibreglass longbow to a wooden longbow.’’

He jokes that the way he’s regressing he’ll be throwing stones soon.

Ed says a friend with a daughter in the Medieval Society asked if he’d make a longbow for her.

‘‘Suddenly I thought I could make this a business.’’

He says the bows are good for hunting but you have to get in close.

These days he says by the time he’s close enough the animals see him and disappear, so it’s mainly the odd rabbit he goes after.

But there is also a growing archery scene in the area, which he attributes to the movies and to the fact that people want to move away from technology and get back to a simpler pursuit.

Mastering archery takes a lifetime, he says, but he can get people shooting pretty well after an hour.

‘‘Most people have a bow that’s too heavy for them. You need a bow that’s 80 per cent thinking about shooting and 20 per cent pulling it back.

Ed started up field archery about six or seven years ago and made up an archery course and a golf-style course where you try and get around in the least number of shots.

When it comes to making the bows, Ed says he could get one shooting in five hours, but to make it nice it would be a day and a half. He also runs courses in how to make a bow over three days.

As far as St Arnaud goes, Ed sums it up simply:

‘‘I like it as a small community but I just enjoy waking up and seeing the mountains.’’

‘‘It’s a place where you can go tramping by putting on a pack in the house, walk out and go for a week and walk right back to the house.’’ John Wotherspoon

DOC operations manager

Mainlander

en-nz

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281994675774855

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