Bus trip from Hell

The Bus from Hell whisks smartly through town after a hasty toilet stop.

Just after 4pm on an cold afternoon beside Lake Te Anau, tourist coaches start jostling for a park. They are two hours out of Milford Sound on their way back to Queenstown. It will be a quick stop, maybe 15 minutes, but with about 30 buses expected over the next hour or so, the town's toilets will be well-patronised and convenience stores will have been emptied of even the most curled-up sandwiches.

By 6pm the last coaches will have roared off along State Highway 94, heading for Queenstown. By the time the passengers return to their hotels they will have clocked up a 12 or 13-hour day - most of it sitting on a bus.

The brief late-afternoon visit was the second time Australian tourist Colleen Morgan had been to Te Anau. The first was earlier that morning during a 30-minute breakfast break on the way in. She wouldn't have minded missing the town altogether. And residents fear many more may think that way if either of two ambitious tourist-moving projects go ahead.

Two private companies have plans - one for a monorail, the other for a gondola - that would circumvent the arduous "bus trip from hell" as some call the journey made daily by 30 to 40 coachloads of sometimes frustrated tourists.

"Not really a contest is it?" Morgan says. "I mean, we choose to see Milford Sound because it's a beautiful example of New Zealand's outdoors.

" If I could get there while experiencing a different sort of beautiful outdoors I definitely would." For tourists such as Morgan, time is money. "Queenstown has an airport and more flexibility. If I had the option of a short train trip or half-day trip to Milford then I'd take it and stay in Queenstown. Te Anau is too far to come for a one-night stay. Why bother?"

It wouldn't have been a matter of Te Anau losing Morgan's Australian dollars, as she had never planned to stay in the town anyway. But if more tourists like American-Japanese couple Yuki and Mika Kaneko take the scenic road instead of the self-drive option, the town could run into some trouble. "We would not stay in Te Anau if we could stay in Queenstown and make a quicker trip across without the long drive."

Every year, 450,000 people visit Milford Sound, the jewel in remote Fiordland's tourism crown. The only ones who can skip Te Anau are those who take a helicopter from Queenstown.

Both the proposals start in Queenstown with a boat ride across Lake Wakatipu, but from there they differ. The $100 million gondola moves through the protected national park spanning the Caples and Greenstone valleys. The $150 million monorail traverses mainly private land.

Both bypass Te Anau, although the monorail planners say they would be promoting their service as a way to get to Te Anau rather than Milford Sound - a claim scoffed at by Te Anau people. The effect these projects could have on Te Anau is a popular topic of conversation in the small town and opinion is divided. Some residents say there is a "Queenstown agenda" to monopolise the tourist dollar. But others talk about positive opportunities to re-brand Te Anau as something other than "the place where you have morning tea on the way to Milford".

Te Anau's resident population was under 2000 at the 2001 Census but it can more than double in a day if the town's tourist beds are all filled. Tourism dollars are essential - 30 per cent of the population work in sales and service, double the national average. Fifty coaches can pull up on some days.

The property market is booming, with about 1000 sections under development or for sale, although at least one reasonably sized retail building project is on hold as the developers weigh up the feasibility of going ahead if fewer tourists stop to shop.

Te Anau is already marketed as a destination in its own right with 3000 beds and a lake second to Taupo in size. It is a mecca for the avid walker with the starting points of tramps like the famed Milford Track within cooee.

But every website or brochure that advertises Te Anau also advertises Milford Sound. It is hard to imagine Milford having any trouble surviving without Te Anau.

Hotelier Lionel Wason's gut feeling tells him neither the gondola nor monorail will go ahead. But if they do, he accepts that Te Anau will have its share of losers in the process - mostly within his industry.

Combating that is just a matter of "sharpening our pencils and getting on with it". Te Anau can survive because it already does, he says.

"We are different to Queenstown. We're laid-back, we already attract a different tourist, the walkers and the nature lovers."

February is the town's peak season and his hotel is full this day, and for most of the week. Yes, the tourists are here because they want to see Milford Sound, but Wason believes many would come and stay anyway. "Milford Sound is the golden goose and everyone wants an egg. I can accept that. We get some now, but we can also adapt to life without so much of the egg available if it really came down to that."

Ron Egan, legal executive and community board chairman, is not convinced the effects of either project would be detrimental to Te Anau. He says many of the "bus trip from hell" coaches bypass Te Anau using a road on the town's outskirts on their way home from Milford. "So we wouldn't miss their cash if those bus trips dried up."

He also believes many travellers would forgo a quicker trip into Milford Sound anyway because there are things they want to see and do in Te Anau. Building the projects might even produce a positive spinoff for Te Anau in terms of employment.

On the surface, both plans offer a reasonable argument - and not just in terms of reducing road traffic numbers. The Department of Conservation is concerned that too many people cram into Milford Sound at the same time each day and that their presence may cause irreversible environmental damage to a national treasure.

Initially, it proposed a cap on numbers of people allowed in, which proved universally unpopular with tourism operators.

In its revised Fiordland National Park management plan, which heard submissions in the past two weeks, the department has instead suggested a reconfiguration of Milford's tourism hub to make visitor numbers manageable. If that plan is accepted, the original, controversial idea to cap visitor numbers would be dropped.

Both the gondola and monorail propose to deliver a more even spread of tourists across the day rather than having 40 coaches roll into port after 11am and all leave again by 3pm.

For some tourists, the congestion DoC is trying to reduce is not a concern. European and Asian travellers are used to sharing their photo opportunities with hundreds of others.

But how many tourists would choose a long road trip over a scenic journey through native bushland - be it skimming through the treetops or snaking across the ground - with opportunities to get out for a wander and listen to the birds?

Neither proposal has begun its initial journey through the resource consent process - which will be overseen by the Te Anau community board - and until they do "we all just have to wait and wonder what the effects might be", Egan says. "Positive or negative for us? Well, that's the $64 million dollar question."