Congratulations to The Powderhorn Chateau A dream realised

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 593, 4 July 1995, Page 9 (Supplement)

Congratulations to The Powderhorn Chateau A dream realised

FROM PAGE 9 and menus with the best of local produce and game. Complementing the Powderhorn Chateau is the Powderhorn Ski and Snowboard Shop, with a huge range of skis, boots, boards and clothing from the best selling brands available for purchase or rental. It introduces a revolutionary demonstration programme for new boot, ski and board buyers to New Zealand and also rents mountain bikes, chains and rollerblades.

The people with the dream

Paul Scarf is the man who has nurtured the idea of the Powderhom Chateau since his days working in St Anton in Austria almost two decades ago. When Paul and his wife Anne worked in St Anton, he as a ski patroller and Anne in a restaurant, they used to meet with other skifield workers in the Bahnhoff — a railway station cafe bar. They had the idea to one day recreate that atmosphere back home. Paul and Anne arrived in Ohakune in the mid-70s, when Paul worked for Doppelmayr building the new Turoa Ski Fields. Once this was completehe spent a year on ski patrol, then started the Miro Park subdivision — a 15-acre development that transformed an area of market garden/farm land. A carpenter by trade, he built numerous chalets and houses in Ohakune and the Turoa Alpine Village.

In 1986 the old Turners & Growers depot site, on the eorner of Mangawhero and Thames Streets, went up for auction and so the development started. First they converted the carrot shed into what is now the Powderhom Ski Bahn, then in 1989 they started on their dream to create a Europeanstyle mountain bar, which they did very successfully with the Powderkeg, Having started and finished a project to relocate and transform an old homestead — a project that had more than its fair share of sceptics theytook on another to create Ohakune' s first international-standard hotel. This was another project that had many locals scratching their heads, not only because it was such a huge undertaking but because it involved unconventional timber construction. Now that Paul and Anne's dream is fulfilled, it would seem that they have a right to rest awhile. But we understand that Paul is already working on other plans ...

History at the heart of the Powderhom

The Powderhom Chateau has a history that goes back far beyond the six years since the Powderkeg was opened. Atits heart is a building steeped in history and stories from the past.

At the core of the Chateau is the 'Carter Homestead' — built during the First World War as a homestead for the family of "FJ" Carter, one the local sawmill owners in the Ruapehu region. FJ's descendants continued his entrepreneurial spirit and went on to create the empire today known as Carter Holt Harvey. Back in 1919 when FJ, his wife Ellenor, four sons named Alwyn, Ivan, Colin and Cecil moved in to the homestead at Rangataua, just south east of Ohakune, they had living with them Ellenor's mother, Mrs Elizabeth Harrison. Grandma Harrison, as they called her, eventually lived in her own small cottage nearby in the Perham Larsen and Co. mill settlement but she spent much of her time at the homestead kitchen and helping look after the children. In those days the home-

stead had a large room known as a "dairy" which, according to notes by Alwyn Carter, was used to store Grandma' s Turn to Page 12

FROMPAGE11 produce. She was famous for her pickles, pickled onions, red cabbage pickle, wines and ciders made from berries, fruit and vegetables .... which she sold to the neighbours. There was also a large room-sized safe in the homestead with double walls filled with pumice brought from Lake Taupo to provide insulation. The original homestead consisted of three bedrooms, lounge, kitchen and dining room. It had a wide verandah across the front and one side leading to the dining room. The side verandah was later glassed in. before additions in early 1936 and 1937 there was a duck- walk leading to a large shed. The additions included two or three bedrooms. lounge, bathroom and wash-house down one side of the corridor and on the other side were a boot room, vegetable room, the dairy and a storeroom for Grandma Harrison's produce. Before septic tanks were built in the late 30s, there were two toilets beyond the homestead' s tennis courts but it was a long trek to the long drop! Finally a bathroom off the main bedroom was added in the early 1940' s. FJ Carter is a man to whom the local district was indebted for the employment and business he created. Originally a runaway from Shannon whose first job at 1 3 was scraping muck off the insides of ship' s boilers in Wellington, he went into business early in life by starting a sawmill in Levin in 1893 and then a flaxmill at Foxton. He kept expanding and by the late 30s he owned numerous sawmills in the region, at Rangataua, Ohakune, Raetihi, Owhango, Pokaka, Barryville. Utiku, National Park and Horopito where his youngest sdn Cecil was tragically killed working with dynamite. In the heyday s of the mills FJ would sometimes ride 80 miles a day on horsebaek to visit his mills. Eventually as the mills worked through the native forests in the region they were closed down. In the Rangataua district the family cleared 6000 acres of land and this was turned into a family farm known as the Ohutu Grazing Co. run by second son Ivan while first son Alwyn ran the Carter timber company . Alwyn went north to Auckland and Maramarua to continue the business that his son Kenneth today runs and is the major corporation known as Carter Holt Harvey. FJ' s third son Colin, now TURN TO PAGE 13

FROM PAGE 12 retired with his wife Dorothy at Pio Pio in the King Country, remembers when, as a child, the family shifted into the homestead, just before the end of the War. A bullock got its foot caught in the rope that worked the mill whistle. It kept on blowing, he recalls, and everyone thought the war was over!