The wine and food scene has bloomed in Central Otago over the past decade. Below are extracts from a new cookbook Saffron: Food from the Central Otago Heartland, which takes its name from the popular Arrowtown restaurant Saffron, established by chef Pete Gawron and his wife, Melanie Hill.
Graham Sydney on Arrowtown:
It must have been about 1958, when I was 10 years old. In our Dunedin neighbourhood – a close-knit bunch of middleclass families, with almost interchangeable children, and every parent called “Uncle” or “Auntie”, as in Auntie Ada, Uncle Len, Auntie Elsie, Uncle Jim – the idea of having a holiday crib in faraway Central Otago, instead of “up the coast” as we did, was taking hold. While the Sydneys persisted with damp, cloudy, coastal-weather holidays at Karitane, other families in our block were looking to the clear blue skies and searing summer temperatures of the golden, dry inland.
Our back neighbours, the Sheridans, had set the trend in motion when, some time in the 1950s, Uncle Eric bought the old pink-washed cottage, once the maternity hospital, on the outskirts of tiny Arrowtown. Suave Uncle Ken Morrison (the Errol Flynn of Kew, Invercargill) had bought a minuscule house close to Eric; his brother Doug put his name on a section across the road and bought an army hut for it, and on the corner near the camping ground Uncle Bob Johnson had a flat-roofed crib, where his two daughters painted doll faces on the stones atop the gateposts.
When we returned from Karitane, pale and complaining of grey Dunedin weather through the school holidays, these cheerful neighbours arrived back sun-dried and nugget brown, as if from another country, telling tales of unbearable heat, lifesaving swims in the Arrow River, cold beers and golf on the parched nine-hole course.
So when the Sheridans invited me to share a holiday with them in the pink house, and be a chum for their youngest son Noel, I couldn’t wait.
Arrowtown! Even then I knew a smidgeon of its fabulous gold history, and I knew the Sheridans’ cottage dated from those early days. Words like “gold rushes” and “diggers” and “nuggets” contained such excitement for a 10yearold, and kept me keen during the long, lurching hours in the cramped back seat of Uncle Eric’s car, driving in the dark through Milton, Roxburgh, Alexandra, the tight and twisting Cromwell Gorge, where the first big gold had been found, then the final challenge to a boy’s capacity to swallow the ever-present threat of carsickness – the Kawarau Gorge.
Uncle Eric was not noted for patience: Getting There was paramount, and carsick kids had to just hold on. We’d be there soon. Try to sleep.
It was a five-hour slog in those days, all going well. (My mother told me that when she was a girl in the 1920s it took them three days to drive the dirt road to Queenstown!) Too miserable to obediently sleep in the bucking back seat, we sought any distraction, and Noel made a brave effort to take my mind off the journey by beginning to teach me a new, secret language – Gibberish.
Harpow arpare yarpou? Arpi arpam farpine, tharpank yarpou. We worked on it, giggling at our private code, and the miles gathered behind us.
Then, thankfully, it was Arrowtown: stars tossed like glitter across the clear black sky, the sporadic conversation of sheep from the paddock across the road, the country whiff of brittle, bleached grass and cracking broom.
Straight to bed in bunks in a back room, swapping Gibberish jokes, and I proud not to have disgraced myself with a projectile vomit from the car window near Roaring Meg. It had been a close thing.
It was the first of many glorious holidays with neighbours for me. Then in 1962 Dad succumbed, sold Karitane, and bought a section on the far outskirts of town, a few wooden pegs in an unmown paddock: a quarter acre for £300.
Arrowtown was a snug village, close and cheap, determinedly modest compared to the grander attractions of wealthy Queenstown. Alex Hamilton had the old stone store, with unpainted wooden shelves to the ceiling, and bread and flour bins hinged at the bottom. (Part of its cellar has become the Blue Door Bar.) Two pubs, one at each end of the main street – the New Orleans and the Royal Oak – each with its own loyal supporters. The swimming pool was unheated and its gate locked after hours, but we climbed the fence and swam regardless.
Saturday night movies were in the hall, wooden benches at the front, sprung leather seats behind, good for making loud frights in critical moments of the film. The projector failed frequently, exploding up behind us in a blast of blue light, instantly blackening the screen, and causing an immediate footstomping, seatbanging, hooting response from the floor. A chosen kid would race out for ice creams while the cursing projectionist grappled in the dark to thread the mended film back, and restore order.
The only tourist shop was Wendy Minshull’s “Golden Nugget”, selling postcards, knickknacks, some amateur oil paintings and knitting needs, across from the Post Office. No malls then, no coffee shops, no real estate, no liquor stores, no fashion stores, no takeaways, no restaurants.
If you wanted to eat out, which none of the cribbies ever did, there was a menu of sorts and even a dining room, apparently, at the smoky old Royal Oak. For the stray tourist, one presumes. Eating out then meant potluck dinners with the neighbours from Kew – whose crib will we go to tonight? – or picnics up the river.
No TV, of course, so after working on the house, lawnmowing and golf for the “boys” it was beer, cards and hilarity for the parents, playing outside until dark for the kids.
Who amongst us could have imagined a Saffron then? Had we vision enough we’d have saved our pocket money to buy whole empty farm paddocks on the fringes of town, and the empty sections still patch-worked through the quiet streets of the settlement. Millionaires by now.
Saffron, Mel and Pete’s beautiful dream, symbolises the new Arrowtown: unpretentious, sophisticated, consummately classy and welcoming. We eat like the millionaires we are not, surprised again at how tasty and seductive food can be; we are treated like family; we delight in the infectious enthusiasm and marvellous skills of Pete and his team. No one leaves Saffron uninspired, unaware of the privilege.
Who indeed could have imagined this Arrowtown, this Saffron?
Narpot marpe!
Nor could I ever have imagined Mel and Pete would buy that pink-painted cottage I first stayed at, and make it their home. They did, they have, and we all can be grateful.