Tracey Roxburgh

Another reason to celebrate New Year in Queenstown was revealed yesterday, with the announcement the resort will stage New Zealand's newest music festival on January 3.

A few eyebrows were raised last year when it was announced Lake Wakatipu would be patrolled by a Coastguard unit.

Queenstown Primary School is the latest addition to the Enviroschools programme, after the school signed a memorandum of understanding this week.

They call him "Goonie" and on the field he is an easy man to spot.

Come the first Tuesday in November, some lucky racehorse owner will hold aloft the trophy for the $A5 million ($NZ6 million) Emirates Melbourne Cup, the world's richest handicap race and the greatest race in Australia and New Zealand.

Competition has been intense at the Queenstown Events Centre in the past couple of days, as 16 teams from throughout the country vie for titles and national team selection in the New Zealand men's championships.

For the first time, Queenstown has two representatives in the 42 Below Cocktail World Cup.

Otago Rugby Football Union commercial and marketing manager Chris Green says it is not right to blame the New Zealand Rugby Union for pulling the plug on the Highlanders' Super 14 fixture in Queenstown next year.

Wakatipu High School clinched the South Island Secondary Schools ice hockey championships in Dunedin last week, winning every game the team played.

The New Zealand Rugby Union's decision not to hold a Highlanders Super 14 rugby match in Queenstown next Easter was "incredibly disappointing", Lakes Leisure board chairwoman Jane Taylor says.

It may just be the coolest job in the world.

When 45 of the world's best mixologists (yes, there is such a word) congregate in the same town, several things are guaranteed to happen: there will be madness, there will be mayhem and there will be an abundance of tasty cocktails made.

A Central Otago Polytechnic team, coached by Blanket Bay's Mark Sycamore, has won double gold at the Nestlé Toque d'Or, New Zealand's most prestigious student culinary and service competition, contested in Auckland on Monday.

If only walls could talk, Arrowtown's New Orleans Hotel would have some yarns to spin - 142 years' worth of them to be precise.

During the annual Queenstown Winter Festival, an event is held on Coronet Peak which seems like a bit of madness - Bikes on Snow.

Queenstown ski racer Janelle Miller made it three from three on Saturday, winning the national slalom title at Coronet Peak, while Wanaka's Leighton Winsloe secured the men's trophy by a narrow margin.