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 "luxury estate" near Queenstown where my parents live.

The manager, a friendly, outgoing type from Poland, supervises a staff drawn from many nationalities, including several Asians, he told us proudly.

He greets and farewells diners to the restaurant, attached to a golfing supplies and fashion store. While I  had indeed been to the restaurant before, it was my first visit to the southern alps 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.

The golf club at Jacks Point

It was barely developed, as they were among the first residents; unlike today, 10 years later, when I saw hundreds of houses nestled in the hills. 

The golf course is wrapped around Lake Wakatipu, with the Remarkable mountain range as a backdrop.  It's remote and quiet, with spectacular, often snow-clad views almost justifying the frigid cold residents must endure in winter months. 

My parents are spending their first full 12 months here this year, after previously dividing their time between this house during the summer months, and a second home in Banks Peninsula, close to Christchurch, which they have now sold.

My parents' old place in Banks Peninsula

I sat on a small wharf jutting into the lake outside the restaurant while waiting for lunch to arrive.

I recall the last time we visited the restaurant: my parents, two sisters, their families and I took a table outside overlooking the lake. My young nephews and nieces ran about the place as the adults mused on life.

Today, it was just Mum, Dad and me, and we dined indoors to protect against the cold. I was to see my sisters later in the week in nearby Wanaka, where the older of the two girls, S, 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. I saw none of them on this trip, though spoke to three of the six on video call.

My parents were to tell me later that our family ties to this part of the snowy southern alps go back to our first visit to New Zealand, when we arrived as tourists from Australia, in the early 1980s.

"More than 40 years ago we visited New Zealand 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 New Zealand so much we decided to move here," they added. 

We had spent our childood on the northern beaches in Sydney where we went to school and lived close to relatives. We swapped the sun-drenched years we enjoyed there for the uncertainty of new lives in cold, insular Christchurch, a city on the east coast of the South Island we barely knew.

My father found a job at a school after we returned from our Kiwi holiday, and asked if we would like to move to New Zealand permanently to start our lives again. 

On the day we left, we visited my maternal grandparents at their Pittwater home about 10min away from our own place in Sydney; earlier, we farewelled our cousins, and said goodbye to our mates at school. 

Our previous home in Sydney as it now looks, and above, the view of Pittwater 

My parents decided to keep their house in Sydney, which they rented out for many years before selling it, shortly before I was to leave New Zealand for Thailand, in fact. I had finished my schooling and worked there for 12 years, and decided it was time to move on.

I thought about going back to Australia, and in fact visited an uncle in Brisbane for some weeks while I looked unsuccessfully for a job. However, in the year 2000 I moved to Thailand instead, where I have lived since.

Until my most recent trip back to New Zealand, I did not know my family's ties to this rugged part of the South Island stretched back so far, or that they would prove so enduring. 

Side view of the golf club at Jack's Point

My younger brother was to move back to Australia after graduating, where he married and started a family. However, my two sisters met Kiwis while studying, and settled down in New Zealand where they still live: one in the South Island, the other in Auckland in the North. 

My parents bought a home close to the New South Wales/Queenstown border in 2005 to be close to my brother, but sold it when he died and now live in New Zealand permanently. 

The wharf where I did my musing

They have not gone back to Australia to live, and nor have my sisters.

I suspect my sisters would regard themselves more as Kiwis today rather than Aussies, as they left Australia when they were still little.

When I returned to my parents' place on this trip, and visited the golf course restaurant for a second time where I met the chatty Polish host, it was my first to New Zealand in five years. 

I last saw S, the older of the two girls, on that earlier trip five years ago, but I had not seen the younger one, H, for 10 years. 

As I sat musing over the lake, I could have been looking at reflections of myself on that boat trip in the early 80s: a boy in his mid-teens who could not suspect that his family's life would remain entwined with the southern lakes district for decades to come.

Today, 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.

View from my sister's home in 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 beautiful pebble beach by Lake Hawea.

Sister 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 adapted well to the area since their move there full-time, as has my other sister S since she bought her home in Wanaka.

That leaves me the odd one out, as I asked myself that day on the wharf: 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!