Blast from the past

Jacks Point golf club, with the Remarkables range

"You have been here before," the restaurant manager said mysteriously.

The restaurant is the heart of a golf club and high-end housing development near Queenstown where my parents have made their home.

The manager, a friendly, outgoing type from Poland, supervises a polyglot staff drawn from many nationalities, including several Asians who work in the kitchen or wait tables, he told us proudly.

The golf club at Jacks Point

He greets and farewells diners to the restaurant, attached to a golfing supplies and fashion store, like a pro.

While I  had indeed been there before, it was in fact my first visit in 10 years.

The last time I was there, my parents had only just moved into their place on the hills at Jack's Point about five minutes away.

It was barely developed, as they were among the first residents; unlike today, 10 years later, when I saw perhaps hundreds of houses nestled in the hills. With the majestic Remarkables mountain range as a backdrop, they look down on the golf club and sweeping golf greens wrapped around Lake Wakatipu. How about that for a view?

Earlier, while waiting for lunch to arrive, I sat on a small wooden wharf-like structure jutting into the lake outside the restaurant.

I recall the last time we visited: my parents, sisters, their families and I took an outside table for lunch.  My young nephews and nieces ran about happily as the adults mused on life.

Today, it was just Mum and Dad, and we dined indoors, though I was to see my sisters later in the week in nearby Wanaka, where the older of the two girls has bought a large home.

Their children, the same ones who ran about the place 10 years ago, are now grown up, with only one still attending school; the others are studying at university or have entered the workforce.

Side view of the golf club at Jacks Point

My parents told me later that our ties as a family to this part of the snowy southern alps in New Zealand go back even further than I realised.

"More than 40 years ago we visited NZ with you kids for the first time and took a boat to have lunch at Walter Peak, which you can see there to the west of the lake," they said.

"We liked NZ so much we decided to move here in the early 1980s," they added, when we swapped our old lives in Sydney for a new one in Christchurch, about six hours away from Queenstown.

My Polish friend was right: I had been there before.

The jetty where I did my musing

As I sat musing over the lake, I could have been looking at reflections of myself on that boat trip: a boy aged in his mid-teens who could not suspect back then that his family's life would remain entwined with the southern lakes district for decades to come.

The elder of my two sisters has bought a second home in Wanaka, about 90min from Queenstown, where she hopes to move by the end of the year from her main home in Auckland.

Lake Wanaka

My other sister lives in nearby Dunedin, about 3.5 hours away, but takes regular skiing trips to this part of the South Island, which she knows well.

My family and I packed a lot into my 10-day stay. My sister H, who is big on fitness, took me down lengthy running tracks and on brisk mountain walks.

Sister H, Mum out for a walk

I tried out an e-bike for the first time on the hills around my sister S's place in Wanaka. We visited historic Arrowtown, and drove through the Millbrook golf course. 

We tried fishing for salmon at the lake-to-plate fishing restaurant Hook (no luck, unfortunately); and for a little quiet reflection headed to a specular pebble beach by Lake Hawea.

H knows these stamping grounds well, providing a background commentary about friends she knows, places she goes when she's in town.

My parents have also immersed themselves in the area since their move, as has my sister S since she bought her home in Wanaka.

That leaves me the odd one out: so what is it about ski resort towns and spectacular mountain scenery that I don't like?

Old clippings from my mystery box

"We have an old box of your things here which surfaced during our move."

That was my parents, on a recent Google Meet call, shortly before I travelled to see them in NZ.

An old box of fading papers which I had last rifled through 25 years ago, I suspect, when I first left NZ for my new life in Thailand.

I put a bunch of papers in a white stationery box and forgot about them.

When I was at their place in Jack's Point, I took a closer look. The box contained old news clippings from my time as a reporter in Christchurch, some of which I can't recall ever writing.

I also found legal papers dating from my split with my former partner, and documents related to the sale of our house shortly before I left.

More interestingly, I unearthed old emails between her and her chat friends talking about her affair with the man who was to marry her.

They look tacky, even now, but I have taken pictures of a few of them to illustrate this post - for old time's sake!

A collection of awful chats...

I also found an old cartoon of me which the resident cartoonist at my last newspaper drew to accompany a feature story I wrote about a men's support group with whom I spent a challenging weekend on the outskirts of Christchurch.

I am reposting it here, partly because it's one of the few pieces I wrote for which I still have an online record (the others were clippings), and because the cartoon bears a good likeness to the hairy, bespectacled young guy I was back then.

As for the other stuff, those tatty memories can go back in the box for another 25 years!