Experience the ultimate in luxury train travel on Rovos Rail in Southern Africa
With no Wi-Fi, fine South African wines and stunning off-train excursions, Rovos Rail's journey is a step back in time in the best way. Photo / Rovos Rail
When it debuted in the late 1980s, Rovos Rail was the first train company to outfit its carriages with posh amenities. More than 40 years later, Bonnie Pop jumps aboard to experience the bucket list journey
Nothing quite prepares you for your first luxury train experience. It's as close as
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NZ Herald
24-06-2025
- NZ Herald
Experience the ultimate in luxury train travel on Rovos Rail in Southern Africa
With no Wi-Fi, fine South African wines and stunning off-train excursions, Rovos Rail's journey is a step back in time in the best way. Photo / Rovos Rail When it debuted in the late 1980s, Rovos Rail was the first train company to outfit its carriages with posh amenities. More than 40 years later, Bonnie Pop jumps aboard to experience the bucket list journey Nothing quite prepares you for your first luxury train experience. It's as close as
Otago Daily Times
12-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Op shops a trove of treasures
Proving that one person's trash is another person's treasure, a Dunedin woman has furnished her home with free and thrifted pieces. Kim Dungey reports. "It's kind of crazy," Anna Easton reveals. "My husband will be walking down the street and someone will yell out to him, 'I love your new bed sheets'." The comments might be a little personal but they're par for the course when thousands of people follow your wife's every decorating move on social media. Dubbed the "op shop queen", Mrs Easton has styled almost their entire home with things bought from second-hand stores and op shops or found on the side of the road. After two decades travelling the world, she returned to New Zealand with her South African-born husband, Sean, and their daughter, Frankie, in 2020. The family initially lived in Mrs Easton's home town of Oamaru, before moving to Dunedin. While much of their furniture is still in storage, the Halfway Bush house they are renting is filled with colourful and eclectic objects. "Everything from our couches to our stereo, our Persian rugs, our artwork, fabrics and clothing, it's all got a story," she says, pointing out the gold velvet curtains in the living room that cost just $30. "I was so excited when I saw them, I threw them over my shoulder. I'm just like, 'this is insane'." There are also vintage bowls and cutlery, candlewick bedspreads, retro lampshades, a Marantz stereo "that plays as beautifully as it did in the 1970s" and old-school speakers, some of which serve as bedside tables and coffee tables. The recycling enthusiast says she gravitates to certain colours, such as mustard, turquoise, orange and yellow, and describes her style as "eclectic colourful textures, bold boho art, modern retro and totally random". "I haven't done it for fun recently, just because we've been moving so much, but when I do go to op shops to browse, my favourite thing to look at first is the homewares/bric-a-brac section — that's my guilty pleasure," she says, picking up two mid-century "genie" bottles she found at the Oamaru Trading Post and "had to have". The items they have found on the side of the road have blown them away, she adds. In Melbourne, where they lived for a decade, they drove around on the days kerbside hard rubbish collections were held, dragging home colourful rugs, wooden pews and a green-fringed lampshade. Frankie's Scandinavian-style day bed was found around the corner from their home, as mother and daughter were returning from the supermarket. "I saw it and was like, 'oh my God'. The week before, I'd found a [flatbed] trolley on the side of the road so I got the trolley, put the bed on it and wheeled it the two blocks home." Working as a freelance photographer in Victoria's capital took Mrs Easton to suburbs she would not usually visit. "I'd see all these op shops and it was really exciting so I started to make a list of them to remember the best places to buy rugs or furniture or curtains. Then I started photographing them and making albums on my computer." That led to a Facebook page and website, She Hunts Op Shops, where she writes about op shops, photography, family life, outdoor adventures and "owning a poo business" — the couple bought a Portaloo and septic tank business, Awamoa Sanitation, in 2020 and still commute to Oamaru to run it. She also recently recorded a podcast for the Otepoti Waste Minimisation Network (Rethinking Waste on Spotify) and is planning a guide on Dunedin's op shops to complement the Wanaka, Queenstown and Oamaru ones already on her website. "We love living in Dunedin. It's the funkiest city in the whole world ... and the op shops here are dripping with treasure." The secrets to successful op-shopping include visiting them regularly and being patient, she says. Sometimes she has time to browse but usually she is looking for a specific everyday item. "I could go to six op shops in a day but when I go, I'm in and out like a fly." "For instance, if we need more screws or tools for our business, I'll go to specific op shops that I know sell hardware and I'll buy them there ... And if we really need some sheets, I'll only look at sheets. I won't look at anything else." Having moved seven times in the past four years, she also knows something about making a rental more homely. The first thing they do is put their own curtains up, she says, adding that replacing the "corporate grey" curtains in their rental immediately changed the look of the whole house and that she collects second-hand curtain accessories, such as wire, rings and hooks, "because buying that stuff new is just so expensive". Then they add their own lampshades, rugs and artwork, placing any existing ones into storage until they leave. While she will buy new items as a "last resort", op shop purchases are usually cheaper, more sustainable and better quality, she says. It's also about nostalgia and the thrill of not knowing what she will find. Recently, she went to a charity shop to buy a mop, also leaving with a $3 disco ball. "It's brought me so much joy. It's in my bedroom and when the sun hits it, that room sparkles like it's Studio 54." Frankie, 9, has inherited her parents' thrifty ways. "She's into buying things second-hand on Facebook Marketplace, which I think is really awesome. She's happy to wait for the best deal as opposed to wanting everything now. And she looks after her toys so she can sell them on afterwards ... " At the same age, Mrs Easton also had an eye for a bargain. "My friends and I built a tree hut and I chose the location specially to be above the dump so I could see what people were throwing out," she says. "When they left, I would drag the furniture up the hill. I decorated our entire tree hut with stuff from that rubbish tip."
Otago Daily Times
30-05-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Son of Arrowtown's colourful life
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.
