Former Queenstowner Grahame McLean, who died last week, aged 87, was not only a pioneer Kiwi filmmaker, but also someone who, amongst other ventures, saved two historic Queenstown Mall buildings.<\/p>\n
He also used to own a restored old stone cottage McConnachies in the Moke Valley, behind Queenstown, where he shot tele-movie\u00a0A Woman of Good Character\u00a0in the early \u201980s.<\/p>\n
Grahame, who with brother Terry tried to bust open the Milford Track for freedom walkers, only for concessionaire Tourist Hotel Corporation to call in the cops, moved to Queenstown in 1969 to take over one of the resort\u2019s three restaurants, Carroll\u2019s, in Beach St.<\/p>\n
He bought the 100-year-old former town hall in the then-new Mall from ex-mayor George Cochrane, who\u2019d used it as a movie theatre with an opening roof.<\/p>\n
He stripped it back to its original stone and brick, brought back its balcony and veranda and opened it as Wakatipu Trading Post, with 13 boutique shops, in 1973.<\/p>\n
One tenant was Terry, who with his wife Erina opened the very successful Staircase Fashions, and another was Christchurch hairdresser and later mayor, David Bradford.<\/p>\n
“I brought potters and weavers into town and gave a reason for people to stay more than 24 hours,” he said.<\/p>\n
Between times Grahame produced the first independently-made drama series shown on New Zealand TV,\u00a0The Games Affair.<\/p>\n
He later had production roles in TV goldrush drama\u00a0Hunter\u2019s Gold, shot around Queenstown, Roger Donaldson\u2019s\u00a0Sleeping Dogs,\u00a0Beyond Reasonable Doubt\u00a0and\u00a0Sons for the Return Home\u00a0which was shot in Samoa.<\/p>\n
Betraying his trademark hard work and wry humour, he stated: “Somebody asked me why I worked in the film industry and I said \u2018because I couldn\u2019t think of anything harder to do\u2019.”<\/p>\n
Grahame gave breaks to the likes of scriptwriter Fran Walsh \u2014 who married director Sir Peter Jackson \u2014 and, in Queenstown, screen industry entrepreneurs-to-be Barbara Williams and Brett Mills.<\/p>\n
He also bought historic Eureka House, in The Mall, which was formerly staff housing for nearby Eichardt\u2019s, and restored it, too, bringing down chef Chico Lanz, from Mount Cook, to open what later became Chico\u2019s Bar & Grill.<\/p>\n
He even took over the former Veint\u2019s butcher shop across The Mall, converting it to a steak bar and deli downstairs, though a planned upstairs cinema didn\u2019t go ahead.<\/p>\n
Grahame later bought historic Arthurs Point Hotel, operating NZ\u2019s first outdoor dining before the council dug up the landscaping, causing him to leave town in the early \u201980s.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d return to visit his old haunts and stay in McConnachies for months at a time, and 10 years later still called Queenstown \u2018home\u2019.<\/p>\n
In \u201994, he told\u00a0Mountain Scene\u00a0NZ had an indigenous architecture.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s important we do all we can to encourage it.<\/p>\n
“The traditional look is never out of fashion, whereas modern-look styles date.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Queenstowner Grahame McLean, who died last week, aged 87, was not only a pioneer Kiwi filmmaker, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-100982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}