Cherries grown in Cromwell. Photo / Central Otago NZ
Stone fruit and wine have always put Cromwell on the map, but there is one special day during summer when the pips of their produce are put to another, rather unusual, use writes Tim Roxborogh
We had plans. And those plans were pretty good: A week in a beachside bach in a remote part of Coromandel, a perfect way to spend the last few days of 2024 and to ring in the new year. Even if “ring in the new year” generally means “collapse into bed at 10pm” when you’ve got young children. Like it was for a lot people, 2024 had been challenging year, not the least because we lost my dear Mum in June. We were holding on in an eyes-on-the-prize kind of way for that beach holiday and doing some long overdue defragging. Nothing would get between us and that never-ending, somewhat car-sick-inducing “are we there yet?” highway up the west coast of the Coromandel Peninsula to Otautu Bay …
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Then the email arrived. It was an offer to commentate cricket – a lifelong obsession – in Alexandra, Central Otago. Three matches, five days and six nights from Boxing Day through to January 1. And what started as a “I’m going to have to say no”, morphed into “hang on, what if I took Aimee and the kids?” And given my Dad lives in Dunedin along with one of my sisters, and with another sister due to be visiting them at the same time, the twitch of an idea to make this an extended, healing family holiday in one of the most dramatically beautiful parts of the country took hold. Crucially my wife – wondrous soul that she is – was game. And it so it came to be: we swapped coastline for the place in New Zealand furthest from the ocean.
All of which explains why I missed out competing in the annual Cherry Pit-Spit Championship in Cromwell on December 29 – I was half-an-hour down the road in Alexandra calling the 4s, 6s and wickets at Molyneux Park. But boy did Riley (5 years old) and Austin (18 months) love it. With the venue a lovely patch of lawn in the centre of Cromwell’s locked-in-time Heritage Precinct, contestants both young and old would wind their bodies back before unfurling to spit their pits the greatest distance.
With all the gravitas of an Olympic event, a mat was laid down, officials took their places, the brave hoickers lined up, serious heads nodded, measurements were made, and fans oohed, ahhed and erupted into applause. Chris McIlwrick was unfazed by the crowd nor the occasion and romped to victory with a spit of 11.17-metres, though my wife reliably informs me this was shy of the mammoth 15.95-metre hoick by Tui Smith in 2023. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the competition’s all-time record going back to 2006.
It is right that Cromwell – population 7440 – hosts this unique marker on the New Zealand sporting calendar given its status as the nation’s undisputed “stone-fruit capital”. You might even go so as far as to say that of all of New Zealand’s small town manmade sculpture-icons (merely “sculpture” or “icon” is inadequate), the big apple, pear, nectarine and apricot of Cromwell – built 1990 – might just be the most impressive. Forgive me Ohakune’s big carrot, Paeroa’s big bottle, Tirau’s big corrugated sheep, Te Anau’s big takahe, Gore’s big trout and about a dozen other small town “sculpture-icons”, but Cromwell’s got it.
Though next time they’re doing maintenance on the sculpture-icon, they might want to add a big cherry given nearly half of all New Zealand’s export cherries are grown in the Cromwell region where the dry climate and combination of cold winters and hot summers are ideal.
So I missed out on the cherry spitting and the pick-your-own experience at the nearby Cheeki Cherries orchard that Aimee, the kids and the rest of the family also adored, but given we’d chosen to make Cromwell our base for our six-night Central Otago holiday, I could play catch up. And that I did, shopping with the family at the weekly markets in the Heritage Precinct, followed up by a picnic on the banks of Lake Dunstan with the town’s Gold Rush-era buildings behind us looking much as they would’ve in the 1860s.
We also dined and sampled wines at the just-opened Wooing Tree Cellar Door & Kitchen – the latest addition to Cromwell’s hospitality scene and located right across from the giant sculpture-icon. Specialising in shared plates like a delicious Vietnamese Prawn & Rice Noodle Salad and Korean Fried Cauliflower, this is a high-end establishment and a reminder that Queenstown doesn’t have a monopoly on the region’s best restaurants. Notably, Hollywood star Reece Witherspoon is said to have ranked Wooing Tree’s Blondie (a Blanc de Noir made from Pinot Noir grapes) as her favourite New Zealand wine. I’m not one to argue with Reece, but the pinot gris was pretty sensational too.
Fruit and wine have put Cromwell on the map for years, but they’re not the only things that have been pulling the tourists in of late. Since 2013, Highlands Motorsport Park has established itself as one of the premier man-made tourist attractions in the South Island. It’s everything from a multimillion-dollar classic car museum (that DeLorean seemed to have a magnetic pull on me as a Back To Future fan), to a Central Otago-themed adventure mini-golf course, to a 650-metre go-kart track, to a virtual-reality experience, to a lesson in imaginative toilet design, to yes, a world-class 4.1-kilometre race track.
Briefly on the toilets, Highlands is rightly very proud of their ‘Loos With A View’ where you can relieve yourself in plush, palatial luxury while overlooking the racing, or – if you don’t mind company – a series of musical urinals that kick into action upon use. And as their name suggests, the view over the track with the mountains beyond is something else.
That is unless a certain Tim Roxborogh is driving one of the ‘Radical U-Drive’ racing cars. The kind where you get properly suited up and helmeted and have to sit in the vehicle before the detachable steering wheel gets fitted. You have an expert driver with you for seven laps to aid in you going as fast as possible as safely as possible. I thought I was a natural, but Riley’s first words to me afterwards suggested otherwise: “Daddy, how come you were driving so slow?” Well, at least it was exhilarating for me! If probably not my professional co-driver and evidently not Riley either.
That girl has a need for speed, as shown by her ecstatic squealing and laughing a few minutes later while we were driven 180-kilometres per hour in a Porsche Cayenne Turbo for the ‘Highlands Taxi’ attraction. And then it was mini-golf and lunch at the café. We did a half-day but could have easily spent longer. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t always come true, but in the case of Highlands and the man who dreamed it all up – Tony Quinn – you very much get a sense it has for Cromwell.
The same can be said for just how much cycle tourism has exploded in Central Otago in the 21st century. Cromwell acts as an ideal hub for all the different trails on offer with our family choosing a 30-kilometre section of the famed Otago Central Rail Trail. With Riley on a seat with pedals attached to my e-bike, Austin in a chariot behind Aimee’s, and my sister Katie and nephew Max on individual bikes too, we went in tunnels cut through rock over 200 metres long, crossed bridges over a century old and saw up close the mountains, gorges, wild landscapes and historic villages that make this part of New Zealand so stunning.
Finishing up at the Chatto Creek Tavern – a 139-year-old stone-built village pub and garden so charming it’s like every dream country pub rolled into one – it was the best exclamation point on a wonderful family holiday. My father was there, three of his grandchildren were there, and three of his four children. Mum would’ve been smiling. And Coromandel can wait for another summer.
Tim Roxborogh travelled as a guest of Tourism Central Otago.
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