Son of Arrowtown's colourful life

Otago Daily Times

30-05-2025

Jim Childerstone, aka 'Five-mile Fred', who died recently, aged 90, was well known to many Whakatipu residents despite living out of town for the past 30 years. Philip Chandler delves into his full life and his interesting take on wilding pines.
Forestry consultant, logger, writer, hiker, golfer, adventurer ... the list goes on.
Third-generation Arrowtowner Jim Childerstone, who died recently, aged 90, might have lived with his wife Margot in North Otago for the past 30 years, but Arrowtown was still where his heart was.
Raised there, his parents were Mary and Walter, and Mary's father was well-known local doctor, William Ferguson.
When almost 7 he and Mary joined Walter in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he developed tea plantations.
However, it was World War 2, and as Japan was about to invade they escaped by boat to South Africa.
At one school he learnt rugby "the South African way under a former Springbok", he said.
On arriving home he returned to Arrowtown School.
He wrote he and school mates risked their lives exploring old gold mining tunnels.
In his book, Up the Rees Valley, he wrote about 60-plus years of local trips and tramps with friends including summiting, with a schoolmate, the Remarkables in 1952 during a challenging 16-hour day.
Margot says at Lincoln College, near Christchurch, where he received an agricultural diploma and post-grad degree in soil and water, he paid for most of his books from goldpanning in Arrowtown.
She adds he stayed an extra two years to play on the college basketball team.
He started his journalism career at Auckland's Herald newspaper, but had the opportunity to earn more as a pneumatic drill operator before a stint as a Sydney Morning Herald court reporter.
He later travelled to Europe, sleeping on beaches in Greece, then in Canada worked on the Calgary Herald and was a part-time ski patroller in Banff.
He and Margot, who grew up in Argentina, met in a London pub and married close by, in Hampstead, in '68.
Jim worked for the British government's Central Office of Information which relocated him to the Solomon Islands.
"We had two and a-half years, which was fantastic," Margot says, "and Jim trained some young Solomon Islanders as reporters."
They had a summer in Queenstown, Jim working as an Earnslaw stoker, then returned to England.
They popped back for good in the mid-1970s and bought a 5.5-hectare Closeburn property, near Queenstown, which was about 70% covered in wilding pines.
They lived in their pantechnicon, Margot recalls, while Jim built a log cabin from Corsican pines.
Visitors commented on its lovely smell, she says — they later moved into a larger residence built of Douglas firs milled above One Mile Creek.
Jim operated a portable mill, cutting timber, mostly wildings, for houses in nearby Sunshine Bay and Fernhill but also over at Walter Peak, at the Arrowtown golf course and even Stewart Island.
He set up a timber yard in Industrial Place, then a larger one called Closeburn Timber Corner where today's Glenda Dr is.
Meanwhile, he wrote his 'Five-mile Fred' column in Mountain Scene over three years — named after Queenstown's Five Mile Creek, not Frankton's later Five Mile.
They were his and mates like 'Twelve-mile Trev's' musings on topics of the day from "up on the diggings".
His columns made a book, Of gold dust, nuggets & bulldust, accompanied by Garrick Tremain cartoons.
The Childerstones also developed the Closeburn Alpine Park campground, but were badly burnt in the '87 sharemarket crash.
The couple, who eventually paid off most of their debts, moved first to Arrowtown then, helped by Lotto winnings, bought in Hampden, North Otago, in '94.
Jim still frequented Queenstown, staying in hotels with Margot when she'd bring through Spanish and Italian tours during her days as a tour guide.
He established a forestry consultancy, and took a stand against the wholesale destruction of wilding 'pests'.
"There are practical ways of attacking the problem rather than the gung-ho attitude of fundamentalist conservation groups," he told Scene on the release of his book, The Wilding Conifer Invasion — Potential Resource or Pest Plant, in 2017.
Pointing also to the ugliness of sprayed Douglas firs on hillsides, he argued wilding trees could be harvested for high-grade building timber and biofuels could be extracted from wood waste while also applauding locals Michael Sly and Mathurin Molgat for tapping wildings for essential oil products.
Queenstown's Kim Wilkinson, who recalls hiking in the hills with Margot and Jim on Sundays before enjoying their hospitality, says "Jim was still hiking around the hills in his late 80s and even in his later years had the mental energy and enthusiasm of a young man in his 20s".
Margot says "people are coming out of the woodwork saying 'he did this for me', nobody has a bad word to say about him".
She reveals before he died there had been moves made for them to potentially retire to a pensioner flat in Arrowtown.