"We just want to be able to build a home on our property."
A seemingly simple proposition from long-serving Upper Clutha rural GP Dr Dennis Pezaro and his wife, Olwyn, is the subject of a scheduled week-long Environment Court hearing in Wanaka, which started yesterday.
The Pezaros own a 58ha block of land in the Cardrona Valley, where they have farmed merinos and cashmere goats, part-time, since 1969.
The Pezaros were granted resource consent by the Queenstown Lakes District Council in February for a 950sq m building platform on their land, with a condition that no building should exceed 400sq m in size.
The Upper Clutha Environment Society (UCES), one of two public submitters to oppose the Pezaro's land-use consent application, appealed the QLDC decision.
Yesterday, Dr Pezaro told an Environment Court panel of Judge David Sheppard and commissioners Owen Borlase and Marlene Oliver, that he and his wife wanted to move to their Cardrona Valley property.
Because of his "on-call" requirements during a 30-year long medical career, originally as Wanaka's sole rural GP and then as the managing practitioner of the Wanaka Medical Centre, Dr Pezaro said it had been impractical to live 15km away in Cardrona.
The Pezaros live next door to the Wanaka Medical Practice.
Since Dr Pezaro retired from full-time work as a GP in 2006, the couple have wanted to relocate to "Sore Bones Station," - the name of their property - to spend more time on their farming operation of breeding cashmere goats.
The UCES opposes the consented building platform location in the Cardrona Valley - a designated outstanding natural landscape under the council district plan - because of the subsequent adverse landscape and amenity effects a future building would have.
Judge Sheppard pursued a line of questioning with Dr Pezaro and planning witness Robin Paterson, of Wanaka, which focused on the 950sq m area for the consented building platform.
The Pezaros will still have to apply for a separate resource consent for a building on the site and Judge Sheppard speculated whether it would make more sense to consider all the consents together.
The Environment Court hearing is set down to continue until Friday, with the UCES scheduled to present its appeal arguments today.
