Peter Davenport has occupied the corner of Malaghan and Dalefield Rds for 56 years, initially in a one-bedroom cottage he’s extended and modernised.
Raised in England, he came to New Zealand with his family in 1953 and completed his last 18 months’ schooling in Christchurch.
He spent his first four and a-half years as head musterer at Walker Peak.
"You’d get off the boat at the [Queenstown Bay] wharf and walk up the main street and it used to take half an hour or more because everybody seemed to want to talk to you and you knew them all."
He bought his Dalefield property, then 4.5 hectares, in the late 1960s, later selling off two blocks so it’s now 2.9ha.
Davenport says he casual mustered on just about every hill top around, including MtNicholas, Halfway Bay, Mt Aurum and Branches.
He also managed many of the 10-acre (4ha) blocks around Dalefield.
"I used to shift sheep from one to another - I had a mob of over 2000 at one stage and 50 head of cattle.
"We were up and down the road with sheep all the time - people would say, ‘couldn’t you have picked a better time?"’
Davenport was the last person to farm Mt Dewar - "I know that like the back of my hand" - and even farmed Pig and Pigeon Islands.
He thinks it’s a pity farmland’s disappearing - "I think those 10-acre blocks would be better as farmland than all these people coming from town who don’t know anything about it".
He planted all the trees on his block including golden elms, walnut trees, weeping willows and fruit trees, while he also put down a well that’s never dried up.
There are also four-bay, two-bay and one-bay sheds and a woolshed.
The house now has three bedrooms and a deck with a spa, sunshade, wood-fired BBQ and pizza oven, while there’s a generous sleepout, too.
"It never gets windy in here, and that’s why the leaves stay on for a long time."
Son Chris recalls 14 tuis sitting at one time at the bird feeder.
"For years we’d come here, drive from the airport and 10 minutes later we’re in a little piece of paradise. It hasn’t really changed since I grew up."
Peter, who ironically looks straight at Coronet Peak but has never skied on it, says he’s selling to live by the sea in the far north of the North Island, having grown up near the ocean.
The property’s for sale via Walker & Co Realty, whose principal Hamish Walker says it "offers several possibilities ranging from running a business at home, having horses, a small lifestyle block with a woolshed or just an area for kids to enjoy an old-school upbringing in Queenstown on the land".
Chris notes it could be also subdivided into three, "and you’d still have three amazing private places", though that’d be subject to planning approval.
The property’s for sale by deadline, closing May 14.
