Fifty years ago, Alan Macalister became just Queenstown’s third full-time lawyer when he started what’s today the resort’s largest locally owned law firm, Mactodd.
After successfully growing the firm, he retired in 2001, but remains a consultant.
Following secondary school at Dunedin’s Otago Boys’ High School, Alan says he enrolled to study law because of "rather distant family connections to the practice of law".
After two years at Otago Uni and short of funds, he joined the Public Trust as an estate administrator for three years.
His sole connection to the university was one capping week during which he was engaged in the capping concert, wool store hops, in which bands performed in a wool store, and leading the capping pipe band through the Public Trust Office and numerous other premises then onto the air at 4ZB.
After a meeting with the law faculty dean, however, he resumed his studies and qualified as a solicitor of the High Court two years later.
He was employed by Dunedin’s Ross Dowling before joining Macalister Bros in Invercargill which he became a partner of — his grandfather and other Macalisters had formerly been there.
He was then invited to open a Queenstown office.
Alan’s initial office was a tiny two-bedroom cottage in Shotover St.
Two years later he bought his partners out and set up APM Macalister.
In those days he says he had no option but to practise all areas of law including court work.
He did quite a bit of commercial work and also got business from the borough and county councils, then the waterways and airport authorities.
In those pre-internet and even pre-fax days, "you had to get things done in Queenstown — instructions didn’t float away to other centres".
With growth, Alan took on ever-bigger offices and, significantly, brought onboard in the 1980s partners Graeme Todd and Kevin Phillips as the firm was renamed Macalister Todd Phillips.
A lot of his commercial work involved overseas clients, including, he recalls, with realtor Locations, offering 13 commercial properties, not on the market, to offshore clients who purchased 12.
Alan says the firm was always technologically advanced, and pre-internet used CompuServe when serving overseas clients.
Famously, they produced Christmas cards for many years depicting the partners in funny poses.
At the bottom was the wording, ‘lest we take ourselves too seriously’ — "that became an internal motto".
Alan also served as the local coroner for about 30 years, investigating, as he said when he stepped down in 2011, "unexplained and violent deaths".
"I’m not aware of any other coroners exceeding 30 years — no doubt there are some out there.
"Many of the inquires were interesting in themselves, and also important to resolve for the families and friends involved."
Legal work even took him to the United States, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Malaysia.
Outside of law he’s a proud father of James and Jacqui.
In the mid-’90s he converted to Buddhism and went on many retreats as well as a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the Buddha in northern India.
"Meditation formed an important part of daily life, but simply practising compassion makes life easier."
He’s a founding trustee of the Lake Street Trust and Rainbow Mountain Trust — the former operates the Dharma Centre in Lake St.
Alan was founding deputy chair of the Queenstown Chamber of Commerce.
He was also approached by two Rotarians to set up Abbeyfield’s elderly housing in Frankton, which took five years.
He did the job on the proviso he didn’t have to report to a committee.
"My modus operandi has been to help set [projects] up then move on — committee membership is not my strong point."
Now 83, Alan’s main roles at Mactodd, as it’s now called, are as a notary public, verifying the authenticity of documents, and as an adviser to charitable organisations.
With most charitable projects he’s been involved with it’s been to facilitate funding, often funding of last resort, through Amisfield Trust, of which he and David Swiffen were founding trustees, and Mactodd Community Charitable Trust.
As for Queenstown’s growth, "I thought the growth was there, to be honest", he says.
He still has great faith in its future, saying people who think it’s been ruined were saying this even last century.
However, having been here 50 years "I’d have to admit the difficult parking and traffic jams were not something I thought I was signing up for".
