Overview In this interview, Wilson recounts his early life in the Catlins and Balcultha. Wilson started his first business at the age of 16, selling fruit and produce from Central Otago to retailers in Gore. Wilson then recounts his time in the air force during WWII. At the end of the war Wilson and his wife Verna moved to Te Anau. Wilson became involved in local tourism. He describes a plan he came up with for a ski field on Mt Luxmore. He recalls how he and Lawson Burrows discovered the glow worm...

Overview This is quite a lengthy interview easily divided into three parts, Nightcaps, World War II and Te Anau. Now in his eighties, Alf has good recall of his early years visiting the Te Anau basin in the 1920s as well as those first post-war years when he and Thelma chose to live in what was then still a small settlement. Listening through the interview you will hear descriptive details about some of the long gone people and dwellings that first dotted the water's edge of Lake Te Anau.

Overview In this interview Joe talks about his early life in Otago, Waikouaiti and then Dunedin. On leaving school Joe took up shearing. Joe then recounts his experiences of WWII in some detail. Joe served in the air force and was prisoner of war from 1943 to the end of the war, after his plane was shot down in Egypt. On his return Joe married and took on a lease for Elmwood Station at The Key. Initially Jo grew fescue, which was exported to the US, and made more money than sheep. Joe goes on to...

Overview Ritchie Air Services was the first commercial passenger air operator to be established in Te Anau. It was October 1960 when Ian's wife Dell was put behind a desk with a book of tickets while her husband took their first Te Anau passengers on a scenic flight around the Basin. The business, started in Gore, shifted its operating base to the resort town the following year where Ian, Dell and family changed the way visitors and residents could view the mountain and lake scenety of Fiordland. In...

Overview Win is among the few remaining people who grew up in the Te Anau Basin when it was still considered remote and inaccessible with land covered in tussock and scrub that was only useful for grazing stock. As the youngest child of Henry F. Blatch, runholder of Lynwood Station (originally gazetted as the Te Anau Lake Run 301B) between 1906 and 1951, Win recalls a childhood of walks and picnics in the Basin as well as some of the events that dramatically changed the lives of her immediate family and...

Overview Fifty years ago, Lottie boarded ship at a Dutch port bound for Wellington. She and her fellow passengers were New Zealand immigrants under the government's assisted passage scheme for displaced persons following the end of WWII. Embarking on a new life with the help of her first employers, Sir Matthew and Lady Oram, Lottie quickly adapted to the New Zealand lifestyle. A few years later, she crossed the Tasman but unable to adjust to the hot South Australian summers, she returned to New Zealand....