“Due to time wasters” the town of Otira is still for sale. I’m picturing the timewasters – including a ‘businessman from China’ who, bedevilled with romance, set out to rescue a small historic town. I’d do the same, if I had the “1 million plus” but – having been there – I know that the plus in ‘1 million plus’ is a big number. She reeks of mould, the old township, and the damp that comes up from below and cascades down from above in fairly equal measure. In fact it’s minging. There’s a lot of renovating to be done.

Otira sits right under the Alps on which clouds lodge and disgorge their moisture before hurtling on light nor’westers across the Canterbury plains to the sea. And unlike Arthur’s Pass township, just on the other side of the pass, with its promise of warm brown sunscraped tussock just over the wide gravel beds of the Waimakariri, Otira is like a shade caught beneath a relentless waterfall. Its walls are towering pinnacles of wet shale, its vision of sky when it is free from lowering cloud, is as a distant smudge of blue. It’s on the main earthquake fault line. It’s flood prone. And its atmosphere is as intense, moody and energetic as a German opera.

Potted history: the hotel, or one like it, was one of 11 Cobb & Co staging posts between Christchurch and Greymouth (others being at Jackson - which still exists as a pub - and Castle Hill). Later when the railway line was put through the mountains, it filled with railway houses. In the 1960s, about 600 people lived in the settlement, dwindling down to 87 in the last Census and an estimated 30 now.

In the late ‘90s a couple travelling across the divide on the Christchurch – Greymouth Tranzalpine journey found out the whole township was for sale and bought it for around $80,000. They set about doing repairs, and trying to attract artisans, artists, and families to the area with reduced rent – for – renovation work arrangements. They met with some initial success, with a fairly well attended arts festival being held there and the old school used as a community gallery, but expected renovations were not done by all the residents, and interest has slowly dwindled while people drifted away.

They’ve said that their decision to sell is based on the continual hurdles they encounter in trying to develop the town, due to flooding and earthquake risks as well as being sited in a national park.
They’ll never sell the town for the million they want – but at half the price, they’ll still have made a good deal, and a buyer might have enough change to actually make something of the place.