For someone who considers he was "a shit of a kid", conceivably no one’s done more to help Whakatipu youngsters than Arrowtowner Wayne Foley.
The 65-year-old effectively revived the Whakatipu Rowing Club and, after helping turn around the local high school, founded a foundation that’s raised millions, while also putting his body on the line to help out.
And between times he’s been a developer, owner of a high-end building company and a proud family man.
However, Wayne’s first 40 years didn’t hint at how his life would unfold.
Growing up in Auckland, he admits he only saw school as a place to play rugby and party, "and yeah, I regretted that later on like everybody does".
After polytech he became a delivery boy for an ad agency, "and that was kind of the beginning of my undoing because advertising in those days was incredibly social".
Trained as an accountant, he ended up as finance director for a publicly-listed finance company when the ’87 sharemarket crash happened.
He and his wife Julia bought a rural Queenstown home in ’89 which they moved into five years later, just after the second of their four children had been born.
"I didn’t really think my career was worth anything in Auckland, I just loved the environment down here."
Those first Queenstown years were tough, with work and friends proving hard to find — "I don’t know how Julia kept it all together".
Wayne secured local project management work, fitting out the Heritage and St Moritz hotels and developing Lake St apartments.
"But I hardly really got a shot at anything till the 1999 floods."
What changed was a call from lawyer Graeme Todd, acting for a consortium who owned a number of flooded CBD properties, asking if he could put them together again.
"I said, ‘Graeme, thank you, I’m up for that’, and I had no idea what they owned."
Included was the iconic, historic Eichardt’s building, which was pretty run down and was entirely restored to a design by local architect Michael Wyatt.
During three years’ work on several buildings, "it was actually the first time I felt like I belonged here".
A spin-off was becoming New Zealand Historic Places Trust’s local chair, "much to the dismay of many of the branch members".
This turned out to be just the start of Wayne’s community contributions.
When he was at Twizel’s Lake Ruataniwha watching his daughter Laura cox for a Dunedin school crew, he sighted a few Wakatipu High students surrounded by other schools’ marquees and boats.
"It turned out they didn’t have a tent, just two boats, and I instantly thought, ‘nah, we can do much better’, and I was bitten by the whole thing, really."
Wayne paid for a van, uniforms and tracksuits and got involved in fundraising through the committee.
"There was one boat I ended up buying without anyone’s approval, I just knew I would have hell at home," but that lightweight double ended up seating several Maadi Cup gold medallists over the years.
Meanwhile, he had children attending Wakatipu High.
"I was pretty unhappy about what I perceived to be a free-range chicken farm, and ended up on the board of trustees (BOT).
"One of my proudest things is feeling I was part of the transition of the school from where it was to what it’s become under [principal] Steve Hall and now under Oded Nathan."
Stepping off the BOT, Wayne then founded the Wakatipu High School Foundation in 2013 to promote the school to the community and fundraise for what the Ministry of Education wasn’t stumping up for.
Local corporates have since contributed hugely to the foundation, which also supports a hardship fund.
Wayne says he eventually walked away from the rowing club and school foundation — "there comes a point where you know you’ve run your course".
"I’m really thrilled to see how successful both are.
"If you had a choice between being on the foundation or BOT, or being on council, I would go for the school every time because that’s where I could add the most value."
His commitment even extended to running the Queenstown marathon in 2017 and ’20, raising, respectively, $26,000 and $43,000 for the foundation.
He says it came after visiting family in London and realising they’d only seen him abuse his body.
The last marathon took him a painful six hours after he’d buggered the radial nerve in his back just two weeks before.
Meanwhile, since his CBD remedial work, his award-winning construction company Trinity has built many high-end local homes.
"One of the interesting things is builders have left and we’ve had new builders come in but we’ve continued to produce outstanding quality homes, and the reason we do that is the culture."
His firm also built some post-quake commercial buildings in Christchurch, while Wayne’s also led the development of the Commonage Villas on Queenstown and the Koko Ridge subdivision below the Ladies Mile highway.
Wayne and Julia, who has her own interior design business, have since moved to Arrowtown — "one of the last bastions of small community left in Queenstown" — and says they’re both very proud of their four children.
One, Sarah, has become a successful muso — "people ask where the music came from, and I tell them I was really good at it when I was on tequila".
For variety, he also enjoys his shareholding in Fiordland charter boat MV Pembroke.
Looking back, "I’ve certainly worked hard, and a lot of years for nothing, but I feel satisfied I’ve given back".
"If everybody just gave back a little, we’d have a wonderful place."
