We live in mad, ambitious times. The price of gold first rose to $NZ1700 per ounce in early May 2010. It took 14 years to reach $2500 by early September 2024 and less than one and a-half years to double to $5301.60 by January 28 this year.
Little wonder that Santana Minerals’ overly ambitious application to mine gold in the Dunstan Range has fired up belief that at least some of Central Otago’s iconic landscape somehow needs to be preserved on a region-wide scale.
In the larger scheme of things we are all visitors to Central and have a duty to take care of it for future generations.
The kind of landscape we are talking about is the surprise one gets when classic Central Otago topography suddenly appears while driving in from just past Roxburgh or the Pigroot.
Karen Daly wrote that "the vast open landscape ... is exactly what makes it special" (ODT, 23.01.2026). We tend to lose sight of this focus. This landscape is distinct from the enclosed Queenstown Basin and Wānaka-Hāwea outwash plain, landscapes that are also part of the magnetism of "Central".
However, the attraction of this "forever" panorama is its undoing.
As for Queenstown, Wanaka-Hawea and other natural landscapes, people respond to their beauty with two opposing emotions: endless amazement and a desire to exploit.
Most recognise that in this paradox, a balance is needed between economic security and the importance of natural environments (green and blue spaces, and extensive brown spaces) to human health and wellbeing. We cannot live anywhere with one, without the other.
But it is not always recognised that this balance is all about putting the environment first over economics, before it is trashed in the sandwich.
Houses, jobs and infrastructure are necessary, but long may the intangible appeal of Central also survive.
This appeal is primarily our aesthetic appreciation of the expansive basin and range landscape of Central that is unique in New Zealand.
All visitors share its wonder, whether for or against Santana Minerals’ proposal.
Reaction to it is essentially due to a fear that the aura of the present landscape is eventually replaced to such a degree by a human landscape that it is beyond saving.
In our passion we have, however, focused on lesser issues: the likelihood that profits go out of Central Otago and New Zealand; the unfairness of the fast-track decision-making process for such a high-impact project; that the taxpayer will foot the bill in the event that the project goes belly-up; the impact on biodiversity; and potential risk of pollution.
I am not downplaying these concerns.
In particular, the ramifications of inevitable pollution will contribute indirectly and cumulatively to our future appreciation of the uniqueness of the present Central Otago landscape.
All these deleterious effects of development can be summed up in the word "intensification". The concern is that the day will come when widespread mining, exotic forestry monoculture, wind farms, an international airport and telecommunication towers obliterate the present natural landscape.
Such intensification occurs when a seemingly empty or seemingly full environment is considered as still having room for competing interests.
This attitude ignores the "wow" factor that makes the big open country of Central such a breath of fresh air to the mind and worth preserving in some manner.
Sir Grahame Sydney alluded to a case against a mining licence for Santana Minerals based on conservation of the natural landscape (ODT, 20.01.2026).
His conclusion comes from years of appreciating the Central landscape as an artist.
In the introduction to Grahame Sydney’s Central Otago, 2011, he writes that the natural landscape of Central Otago "is so recognisably different ...
The region has a symbolic quality for so many, a metaphoric — even spiritual — dimension which so many grasp and never relinquish, and which reaches far beyond plain geography ... but those same qualities that create this ‘meaning’ are being relentlessly transformed. Central Otago’s specialness is being diluted [resembling] anywhere else in New Zealand ... The changes have intensified rapidly".
Central Otago provides a different perspective on life, hiding a tranquillity which is unexpected and seems inexplicable, as Bill Lee wrote (ODT, 23.01.2026).
It piques our curiosity.
Sir Grahame describes this amazement at the natural landscape, as "this paradoxical, unforgettably beautiful Central Otago".
Such an amazing landscape points to an amazing grace for all but those hardened to significance of the "wow" factor.
Sir Grahame’s photography portrays rustic cottages and their inhabitants, stark and rugged landscapes, and magical skies.
Many of his images are not only of natural landscapes but of lonely relics of pioneering days, situated in iconic, remote natural landscapes.
Such contrasts evoke the same feeling of aloneness, yet at the same time the connectedness with nature that one experiences in Central Otago, especially if wandering solo along high ridges and across deep valleys without seeing another soul for days on end.
However, it must be admitted that if such experiences of the natural landscape of Central Otago are in fact the most potent defence against unbridled development, they will still never stack up on their own against the alluring promise of productivity and progress, encouraged by the value humans place on the mighty dollar.
How then can both conservative and progressive appreciations of this region dialogue about the future of Central Otago’s natural landscape?
Our collective appreciation of this landscape involves vast expanses of land, much of which is in private ownership, so such a dialogue will turn on the rights and responsibilities of landowners, who have vested interests in how they believe they should manage their own land.
Or, are we mature enough to negotiate our way through such selfish arrogance, that ignores how, in an important sense, this landscape belongs to all visitors? Probably not yet.
Yet, if there is a will to preserve something of Central Otago’s natural landscape from the kinds of issues that every new development proposal presents, a forward-looking gameplan needs to get under way.
The government could take a lead here, with the management of its own Central Otago estate, modelling criteria that other landowners can buy into in order to arrest development that undermines the very integrity of this landscape that every "visitor" to the region feels drawn toward.
A last word from Sir Alan Mark: It "is the ability of these landscapes to capture and hold us in their thrall. And for that reason alone, we must cherish and defend them against further intrusion" (Foreword to Bruce Hunt’s Tussock).
That is to say, the botanical and environmental science for which Sir Alan is renowned is to him of secondary importance when it comes to valuing what is special about the natural landscape that is Central Otago.
— Ron Adams is former teacher of ethics and theology in Dunedin and a longtime Otago resident.
