Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read, and life as she sees it ...
My mind's been wandering around in that dusty, cobwebby space we all have in our heads.
Some American travel writers who were here last year got in touch and asked me for my thoughts on how Queenstown was before it got all sophisticated.
They had been told 15 years ago was the turning point but it's hard to pinpoint the exact time.
I have been asking other people what they think.
It was only 12 years ago that coffee experts Matt and Cath Hanna opened Joe's Garage behind the old Post Office.
Before that, I don't remember people ever going out for coffee.
Coffee was just what you had when you ordered your toasted cheese sandwich or lamington.
Joe's changed all that.
Incidentally, I know some people's businesses experienced enormous increases in expenditure on car maintenance once those bills from Joe's Garage started coming in.
Now everyone seems to go out for coffee several times a day and they are getting fussier about the particular way they want it. No names will be mentioned but some cafe staff have lists of regulars with "geek"coffee requests.
Nobody ever complained when all they got was a Nescafe or a Kona coffee, even if the Kona had been boiling away for hours.
Twenty years ago, we didn't even have a big supermarket in the basin. Or any casinos.
We got two of each all at once.
Can anyone tell me when the first gym opened?
Food was different, and David Williams (here last week scouting for space for Jamie Oliver's restaurant) can take the credit for bringing Queenstown the idea of eating out in your own town. He opened Number 10 in the Mall and The Cow and the still famous and much missed Upstairs Downstairs.
That was all more than 30 years ago, and locals still go misty-eyed at the memory of the pepper steak, garlic prawns and THAT salad dressing.
In the course of this week's conversations, so many old locals have said how wonderful it would be to have a night or a week of Upstairs Downstairs being open again.
And 40 years ago, Wakatipu was very different and very unsophisticated.
Our family were weird immigrants and ate strange food such as rice and pasta.
At the time, macaroni cheese was the only acceptable face of foreign food.
Chicken and pork were for special occasions and most people drank only spirits or beer.
Fizzy drinks (including beer) came in glass bottles that we would take back to Buckhams for cash. Sports groups and scouts did their fundraising that way.
At the time it all seemed fine, but I'd hate to go back to those day, even though we had petrol for sale in Arrowtown then.
It's no wonder everyone is in love with our lovely Wakatipu.
We live in a town where there is almost no crime or unemployment, there's far more to do than in a town with 10 times the population, loads of outstanding restaurants, the best coffee in the country (actually in the world, if you ask me) and an international airport.
Remember the big map of New Zealand as you drove into the airport showing all the places you could go - Mount Cook, Christchurch, Rotorua, Auckland or Kerikeri?
And having to land at Mt Cook if the weather was OK?
Tourists were almost always on buses doing the still brilliant Earnslaw, Skyline gondola and trips to Milford. Now there's so much more.
I finally tracked down Our Man in New Zealand, bespoke tour organiser Roger Tompkins.
I quizzed him on the sort of things he can do, and while he was prepared to admit he could take someone fishing or set up a romantic dinner for two in a remote location, he refused to divulge any of his secrets, such as the recipe for his prizewinning mancake in the Lake Hayes show, or where exactly Lake Mumblemumble, the most beautiful spot in Wakatipu, is.
You have to see his very funny A Day with a Local brochure to see the many and various ways he woos and wows his clients.
I like to pretend I am a real journalist and I love reading what real journalists write.
Denise Leith is an Australian one who's also got a PhD in international relations and has done way too many amazing things to list here.
She's also written a novel called What Remains.
Kate Price is a naive (very naive) journalist heading off to the war zones when she meets already famous photographer Pete McDermott.
She keeps meeting him in uncomfortable parts of the world like Kuwait, Bosnia, Chechnya and Rwanda.
Everything she believes in is turned upside down by the horrors she sees and challenges all her thinking.
From the very first paragraph it's hideous and fascinating and although it has made me certain I could never be one, I have the hugest respect for those who can report from the nastiest places on earth and still say sane and sober.
And alive.
Congratulations to Himani Abrol, the bendiest yoga teacher we ever had in the Wakatipu on the birth of her daughter, Amaira, and also to Debbie Cavitt who celebrated not just her birthday this week but won The Hills' Nine and Curry night tournament with a blistering 22 stablefords over nine holes.
Not bad for a beginner!
