Michael Hill remembered as a highly intelligent 'visionary'
The founder of Michael Hill Jewellers died at his home in Arrowtown after battling cancer.
He was remembered yesterday by friends and colleagues as "highly intelligent", "very philanthropic" and a "great visionary".
Sir Michael founded Michael Hill Jewellers in his home city of Whangarei in 1979 — it now has 291 stores spread across New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
How he ended up in the business is a testament to the expression, "life begins at 40".
Hating school, where he was bullied, he left at the age of 16 with the intention of becoming a concert violinist.
Told he had left his run too late, he worked for 23 years in his uncle's jewellery business where he showed his marketing flair by winning an international window-dressing competition.
It is also where he met his future wife, Christine, who hailed from England.
In 1977, the couple, who by then had children Mark and Emma, lost everything they owned when their newly-built mansion burnt down, though Sir Michael managed to retrieve Christine's jewellery and his violin.
That night he wrote on a card: "I'm gonna own my uncle's business or I'm going to leave him and start alone".
When his uncle would not sell, he and Christine set up a store nearby, Christine's artistic skills and his own marketing flair — which verged on zany — coming to the fore from their early days.
After the chain took off, the family relocated to the Gold Coast before shifting to Queenstown about 1994, after originally going there to learn to ski.
They then bought a former deer farm bordering Arrowtown, now known as The Hills, where Sir Michael initially developed a chip-and-putt course before commissioning golf course architect John Darby to turn it into a championship 18-holer.
Having been granted three years' rights to host the New Zealand Open, the course opened just in time for the first one in 2007.
When the Open was then shifted to Christchurch, Sir Michael held the New Zealand PGA Championship tournament with a pro-am component.
In 2014, The Hills and neighbour Millbrook were granted the right to jointly host the New Zealand Open, that tournament also adopting the pro-am format.
That arrangement carried on until The Hills' involvement ended in 2020.
While he can be credited with saving the New Zealand Open, Sir Michael also initiated a huge event, the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, which has run every two years since 2001 in Queenstown and Auckland.
It has launched careers for many young violinists around the world and been rated among the world's foremost violin competitions.
Sir Michael, who also hosted many recitals by top classical musicians, revealed his artistic streak by turning The Hills into a sculpture park.
He was also a prolific cartoonist, putting out a book of cartoons in 2019, the year he also started producing weekly cartoons for Queenstown's Mountain Scene newspaper.
In 2007, he launched plans for 17 bunker homes at The Hills, but abandoned the idea.
However, after an agreement in 2023 with the American interests behind the North Island's Tara Iti and Te Arai golf courses, plans are afoot to develop visitor and residential accommodation at The Hills and also expand its golf offering.
Sir Michael's many honours included induction into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame in 2006, becoming Ernst & Young NZ Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008 and being knighted in 2011.
Early this year he hit his first hole-in-one — 72 years after taking up the game — and he and Christine celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
Fittingly, that is the diamond anniversary.
Former Queenstown mayor Jim Boult said Sir Michael was an enormously valuable member of the community.
"He was highly intelligent, always amusing, very philanthropic and enormously interested in the arts."
He had been friends with Sir Michael for more than 30 years since he arrived in the Queenstown Lakes district.
Sir Michael was a "highly engaging person" to talk with, Mr Boult said.
He had a lot of respect and admiration for the fact Sir Michael was a self-made man.
New Zealand Open chairman John Hart said Sir Michael was "absolutely crucial" to its success.
"I have a long association and huge respect for Sir Michael as a great visionary in business and sport.
As a businessman, Sir Michael was very fair.
"He was someone who wanted to do things differently and that sort of clicked with me because we were trying to create something different."
An obituary will follow.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
19 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
‘Son of Queenstown' remembered
The late Bruce Grant. PHOTO: SUPPLIED If Queenstown's the world's adventure capital, no-one epitomised that better than Bruce Grant. That even applied to the tragic end of his life — succumbing to "the mother of storms" after becoming the first Kiwi to summit the world's second highest mountain, K2, without oxygen. Only 31, this 'son of Queenstown' — as he's described on a plaque in the Gardens — had already packed in a lifetime of adventures. Born in the Sydney St maternity home his family once lived opposite, Bruce's mum Ros, who's 93, was a teacher and his dad, the late John, a builder. The youngest of four siblings, he started skiing earlier than the others — "he sort of got dragged along", sister Christine, one year his elder, says. He attended primary and secondary school on Ballarat St, finishing at the latter's new Fryer St campus. Christine says then-skifield owner Mount Cook provided schools with ex-rental gear which Bruce started with. The pair would later miss a lot of school as they ascended the ranks to national ski team selection. New Zealand downhill champ for five years, he and Christine skied that discipline, under the influence of a Canadian coach, at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics. Bruce finished 31st and was also chosen for the '88 Calgary Olympics, but an injured leg didn't recover in time for him to compete. He got into parapenting soon after it was introduced to Queenstown, first flying solo before becoming a commercial tandem pilot for eight years. After summiting many mountains, including Mt Cook seven times, he'd often ski or parapente off them, sometimes for films he starred in. One was The Leading Edge, for which Queenstowner Mathurin Molgat hired him after watching him ski The Remarkables. "He was an exceptional athlete, and he never said 'no'. "If you said, 'you want to do this, Bruce?' it didn't matter what the adventure was, he was in it." They even tried, before crashing, to mountain bike down The Remarkables' 'Elevator' chute. Mathurin found him the strong, silent type. "We drove up to Mt Cook and I think there were about four words exchanged. "He was a very content, self-contained character." Christine says he also meditated — "he was contemplative". A sculpture in his memory in the Queenstown Gardens. PHOTO: PHILIP CHANDLER In terms of extreme adventure, skiing down Austria's long and difficult Hahnenkamm run put him in elite company. His main mountaineering buddy was then-Queenstowner Kim Logan, who marvelled at some of his amazing Fiordland climbs. Although about 10 years his senior and more experienced, he says Bruce was mentally and physically the better mountaineer. "His safety margin was higher than mine." The pair were among rescuers who saved the life of a German backpacker on the Routeburn Track in extreme conditions, winning them all Royal Humane Society bravery medals. Kim recalls the police afterwards shouted them breakfast at Queenstown's then Gourmet Express and they got "absolutely smashed" on Irish coffees — "forget about the coffee, just bring us the Irish [whiskey]". The pair's '95 assault on K2, considered the world's most dangerous mountain, was preceded by a major community fundraising effort. Kim says he turned around just after Camp 4 —"it was my own condition and the weather" — and a few hours later expedition leader Peter Hillary did, too. Bruce and five others subsequently reached the summit, but all perished soon after when "the mother of storms" blew through, Kim says. Christine's sure if they'd had an inkling they wouldn't have summitted. "There was a very strong wind which was unforeseen really, in my understanding it came from the bottom up." Ironically, at the same time his brother Andrew, nicknamed 'Buzz', was experiencing a huge storm after summiting Mt Cook. When Kim returned to Queenstown, a memorial service was held in the Anglican church, after which hardy souls ventured in very wild weather to the Gardens where Christine's husband Dan Kelly's sculpture of a hand grasping an ice axe, in Bruce's memory, had been installed that day. At the time, Christine told Mountain Scene: "Bruce achieved a majority of his goals, there's not many people who could ski off Mt Cook, let alone fly. "He was aware of the fragility of human life in nature, he understood the reputation of K2 fully. "He achieved this goal, who knows what he would have achieved next?" Bruce Grant won every Dash for Cash he entered. Thirty years after his death, Sunday's Dash for Cash on Queenstown's Coronet Peak — a fundraiser for the Bruce Grant Youth Trust — is being held in his honour, from 2pm.
Scoop
2 days ago
- Scoop
King Of The Castle - Canterbury Shearer Wins Big Lambs Championship In Northern Ireland
North Canterbury shearer Hugh de Lacy has had his biggest win in Open-class shearing by claiming the Northern Ireland Lambshearing Championships wool Open title at historic Antrim show-venue Shane's Castle. de Lacy won the four-man final on Saturday, from 2023 Northern Ireland World championships representatives Jack Robinson and Graeme Davidson and Republic of Ireland shearing legend and former World lambshearing records holder Ivan Scott. In a close contest over 13 lambs each, with just 26 seconds separating the quartet, de Lacy was first-off, in 10m 16s, and also scored the pest points in pen judging, to beat Robinson by 1.257pts. From Fernside, near Rangiora, and in his eighth year as an Open-class shearer had possibly his most notable win in a two-sheep all-nations Senior speedshear during the 2017 Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Invercargill in 2017. He's had seven Open wins in mainly smaller New Zealand Shows of 10 sheep or more in the South Island, but won the Canterbury All-Breeds Circuit final in 2023 and 2024 (each over 12 mixed sheep), and in 2022 was third in the national circuit final, over 15 sheep comprising three each of five different wool types, at Armidale Merino Stud in Central Otago. Working in Omagh, de Lacy has been one of several New Zealand shearers working and competing in the UK and Ireland in recent weeks, in addition to the New Zealand team of two that also last Saturday completed a test series against Wales. He has just finished work, is "holidaying now" and will do the All-Ireland championships in Clonmany, Co Donegal, Ireland, next week before heading home to prepare for the shows in Canterbury in the Shearing Sports New Zealand season which starts at the New Zealand Merino championships in Alexandra in October. Result of the Northern Ireland lambshearing Championship at Shane's Castle, Antrim, on July 26, 2025 (13 sheep): Hugh de Lacy (New Zealand) 10m 16s, 40.877pts, 1; Jack Robinson (Northern Ireland) 10m 35s, 42.134pts, 2; Graeme Davidson (Northern Ireland) 10m 44s, 44.431pts, 3; Ivan Scott (Ireland) 10m 42s, 45.177pts, 4.
Otago Daily Times
3 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Sir Michael remembered as ‘great visionary'
Sir Michael Hill has been remembered as a "great visionary" after his death at the age of 86 yesterday morning. The founder of Michael Hill Jewellers died at his home in Arrowtown after battling cancer. He was remembered yesterday by friends and colleagues as "highly intelligent", "very philanthropic" and a "great visionary". Sir Michael founded Michael Hill Jewellers in his home city of Whangarei in 1979 — it now has 291 stores spread across New Zealand, Australia and Canada. How he ended up in the business is a testament to the expression, "life begins at 40". Hating school, where he was bullied, he left at the age of 16 with the intention of becoming a concert violinist. Told he had left his run too late, he worked for 23 years in his uncle's jewellery business where he showed his marketing flair by winning an international window-dressing competition. It is also where he met his future wife, Christine, who hailed from England. In 1977, the couple, who by then had children Mark and Emma, lost everything they owned when their newly-built mansion burnt down, though Sir Michael managed to retrieve Christine's jewellery and his violin. That night he wrote on a card: "I'm gonna own my uncle's business or I'm going to leave him and start alone". When his uncle would not sell, he and Christine set up a store nearby, Christine's artistic skills and his own marketing flair — which verged on zany — coming to the fore from their early days. After the chain took off, the family relocated to the Gold Coast before shifting to Queenstown about 1994, after originally going there to learn to ski. They then bought a former deer farm bordering Arrowtown, now known as The Hills, where Sir Michael initially developed a chip-and-putt course before commissioning golf course architect John Darby to turn it into a championship 18-holer. Having been granted three years' rights to host the New Zealand Open, the course opened just in time for the first one in 2007. When the Open was then shifted to Christchurch, Sir Michael held the New Zealand PGA Championship tournament with a pro-am component. In 2014, The Hills and neighbour Millbrook were granted the right to jointly host the New Zealand Open, that tournament also adopting the pro-am format. That arrangement carried on until The Hills' involvement ended in 2020. While he can be credited with saving the New Zealand Open, Sir Michael also initiated a huge event, the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, which has run every two years since 2001 in Queenstown and Auckland. It has launched careers for many young violinists around the world and been rated among the world's foremost violin competitions. Sir Michael, who also hosted many recitals by top classical musicians, revealed his artistic streak by turning The Hills into a sculpture park. He was also a prolific cartoonist, putting out a book of cartoons in 2019, the year he also started producing weekly cartoons for Queenstown's Mountain Scene newspaper. In 2007, he launched plans for 17 bunker homes at The Hills, but abandoned the idea. However, after an agreement in 2023 with the American interests behind the North Island's Tara Iti and Te Arai golf courses, plans are afoot to develop visitor and residential accommodation at The Hills and also expand its golf offering. Sir Michael's many honours included induction into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame in 2006, becoming Ernst & Young NZ Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008 and being knighted in 2011. Early this year he hit his first hole-in-one — 72 years after taking up the game — and he and Christine celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Fittingly, that is the diamond anniversary. Former Queenstown mayor Jim Boult said Sir Michael was an enormously valuable member of the community. "He was highly intelligent, always amusing, very philanthropic and enormously interested in the arts." He had been friends with Sir Michael for more than 30 years since he arrived in the Queenstown Lakes district. Sir Michael was a "highly engaging person" to talk with, Mr Boult said. He had a lot of respect and admiration for the fact Sir Michael was a self-made man. New Zealand Open chairman John Hart said Sir Michael was "absolutely crucial" to its success. "I have a long association and huge respect for Sir Michael as a great visionary in business and sport. As a businessman, Sir Michael was very fair. "He was someone who wanted to do things differently and that sort of clicked with me because we were trying to create something different." An obituary will follow.
