What are we doing to NZ for a few more dollars?

I TRAVELLED to Queenstown over summer this year, as I have done most years since hitchhiking out of Dunedin as a student in the 1980s.

I get a spedup version of the changes, a vision that stays with me until the next year.

This year on the waterfront I was greeted by a giant handbag warehouse; a middleaged ‘‘reader of tarot’’; a woman with long fingernails ‘‘playing’’ the didgeridoo; a dreary selection of massproduced jewellery; and several frighteningly badly cooked dinners from restaurants that have always been great in the past.

Upon opening the ODT, I read about the poo in the trees left by tourists and finally, an eightstorey version of the Death Star that is planned.

Queenstown — a symbol of horrible handbags, cultural degradation and frozen fish past its sellby date?

Is that what we want for this country? The rest of the world is like that. I thought we were different.

Town planners and fellow citizens, stop counting your bags of gold and look at what is happening here. Margaret Clarkson

Mosman, Australia

HAVING just read a piece on lost high country land I am compelled to write.

What does the future hold for amazing places like Wanaka and its mountains? Is another Queenstown monster looming?

Is it too late to slow the march of money with feet? More gated communities and exclusive golf courses, just what we need — right?

When locals have to leave their seemingly idyllic home towns to ‘‘get away from it’’ on holiday you know there is something not quite right. What are we doing to our country for a few dollars more? John Shaw

Oamaru

Mains family reunion

A reunion will be held at Labour Weekend, October 1921, 2018 at Port Chalmers Town Hall to celebrate 150 years since Charles Mains and Anne McFarlane arrived in New Zealand aboard the Viola. Please email barbaram@xtra.co.nz, ph 0212307835 or write to 25 Quarry Rd, Timaru 7910.