James Beech

An initiative designed to encourage sporting excitement and confidence in Wakatipu children has 46 families registered so far and is calling for more.

Real Journeys, The Helicopter Line and Glenorchy Air were the first small operators in the country to get on board a new energy efficiency stock take designed to help tourism operators improve their environmental performance and reduce their energy costs.

Milford Sound scenery, weather and the quality of tourism operations exceeded visitor expectations, according to a new survey by the Department of Conservation and Environment Southland.

Occupants of a Queenstown residence returned home yesterday to find smoke billowing from the windows.

An American comedian is offering to teach Queenstown residents the art of improvisational comedy.

Incendiary rock band The Datsuns are about to hit Queenstown on Sunday as part of their first string of domestic dates in more than a year.

Nemesis, police inspector, spy- Queenstown man Marty McLay gets to play all those roles and more when he treads the boards as Javert in the upcoming season of Les Miserables.

New Zealand's marine industry sales are predicted to flatten for the next 18 months, but the $717 million annual export business is forecast to double over the next 10 years.

Staff and guests of the four Accor Hotels in Queenstown celebrated annual Earth Guest Day with a clean-up around the One Mile Creek Reserve and a barbecue on Wednesday.

Adventure tourism, single-propeller aircraft and Sir Edmund Hillary were the topics of conversation when a Government minister from Nepal paid an informal visit to Queenstown yesterday.

Frankton Playcentre tots and parents are celebrating their new temporary home at 12 McBride St, in Frankton, after long-awaited resource consent was granted recently.

Land where the first new state school in Otago and Southland in 30 years will be built was blessed in an informal ceremony early yesterday morning.

Business ventures overseas prompted the principal owner of the restaurant in the Bathhouse to sell, but he believes uncertainty over the lease is stopping interested buyers from signing on the dotted line.

A 3-year-old boy was taken by ambulance to Southland Hospital for a head scan after the 1934 Ford Model Y car in which he was travelling was involved in a collision near Arrowtown on Saturday.

The usually serene thoroughfare of Arrowtown was transformed by a blaze of colour and music on Saturday as thousands jostled to see the street parade and enjoy the official launch of the 25th Arrowtown Autumn Festival.

There are only three scenes in the entire three-hour production of Les Miserables that Simon Green is not in, but the Queenstown man has the talent and experience to be the star of the show.

The trust charged with restoring three neglected historic cottages in Arrowtown will lodge a resource consent to allow the properties to be used for semi-commercial ventures "any day" after the Autumn Festival.