Lake Hawea Holiday Park founder Dick Cotter has decided it's time to tidy up his affairs before he "kicks the bucket".
He's been quietly working his way through his "bucket list" for the past three years, taking flying lessons, a bungy-jump and a sky-dive.
There are plenty more things to do on that list and Mr Cotter is not showing any signs of flagging.
But the Cotters have made a family decision it is time for the popular holiday park to be passed on to new people.
They are selling their long-time family business, which Mr Cotter and his late wife Margie established on reserve land leased from the Hawea Domain Board and opened for business on Christmas Eve, 1970.
Their son Mike and his wife Michelle ran the camp for 11 years, before youngest son Jimmy and his wife Rebecca took over in 2000.
"The reason for selling is that no-one in the family wants to take it on in the meantime. And I'm 81," Mr Cotter said.
"No. It's just that Dick's not quite ready to come back and have another run. It's his turn," Jimmy quipped.
The Cotters have poured many years of 5am starts, hard work and love into the camp and the decision to move on is undoubtedly a turning point for them and their faithful campers.
But as the Cotters sit round their picnic table bantering about the good times, there is a sense of accomplishment and pride and also of excitement for the future.
Mike and Jimmy Cotter are builders, as their father was before them, and they will continue working in their trade.
Jimmy and Rebecca, a nurse, and their young sons Patrick (5) and Oliver (18 months) will vacate the managers' home after the sale and move to a new home they are building on a section nearby.
Meanwhile, life should continue pretty much as normal for campers, they believe. The tenure on the 2.8ha block of Crown land is secure.
It has been vested in the Queenstown Lakes District Council, which oversees the 33-year lease, of which 29 years are left to run.
It is unlikely anyone with a passion for Lake Hawea will ask the council to rezone it for purposes other than its present use as a recreational reserve and holiday park (at least while there's a Cotter breathing).
And it's also unlikely the council would initiate such a move either.
QLDC parks and and community services general manager Paul Wilson confirmed this week the council wanted a camping area there and had no plans for anything other than that on the site.
So the most important issue for campers to worry about seems to be whether they were a big enough pain in the backside last year to warrant being barred this summer - and given the Cotters' cheerful treatment of previous "pains", that seems unlikely too.
The Cotters all agree one of the best things about their lifestyle has been the people they've met and the friendships they've maintained over the years.
Mr Cotter recalled a group of single blokes one year annoyed a bunch of spinsters, so Mr Cotter kicked the single blokes out.
As they left, they sang out: "See you next year, Dick."
He did.
"And this year, Jimmy kicked their sons out and they said the same thing. They've already rung and said they want to come back again this year."
The Hawea Domain Board was established by the New Zealand Government in the late 1800s to manage land set aside for recreational purposes.
In the early years, it had some land where the camp is now, the outlet of the Hawea River, a farm, Silver Island, Johns Creek and land near the hotel.
Domain board members were elected every five to seven years, Mr Cotter recalled, and it could be very competitive between volunteers come election time.
After the Lake Hawea dam was built and the outlet land was flooded in the 1950s, the board applied to the Crown to have more lakeside land gazetted to create a camp.
Several years of negotiation ensued with the Burdon family, who farmed nearby, before additional land was secured, and in 1968 the domain board called for tenders to develop the camp.
Three were received, including one from Mr Cotter.
"Ours was the highest tender, which was $200 per year. Not a lot now but it was in those days. When we put in our tender for the $200, we said that if we had an option we would like to make it a sliding scale as there was no income being generated. They accepted that and gave us the first year for $100."
Mr Cotter was a member of the board and was sent out of the room when the board chose the successful tender.
Mr Cotter recalled his bid was contested by Reggie Muir, but two "fellows" from the Crown office by the names of Everest and Campbell supported it as they felt Mr Cotter would keep the board fully informed.
"It was very daunting. We did not know if the camp was going to be a success. We had to borrow the money. Mike was 11 and Jimmy was 2. We had six children and I was flat out building for other people and all of a sudden realised we had to do something about what we had taken on.
"It was put off for quite a while and then Margie said if you don't get cracking, you will never get it done. We organised finance and eventually got over there with a bulldozer and Keith Taylor and I cleared scrub out of the way.
"You could not believe the mess we faced. People had free-camped there for years. There were a couple of long drop toilets and a truckload of glass where people had thrown bottles about, where the ablution block is today . . . Anyway, we got cracking and made a big heap of rubbish down at about [power point] six which we burnt," Mr Cotter recalled.
By the time it opened, the camp had four rubbish bins, 14 power points, a kitchen, laundry and showers. (Now, it has 140 rubbish tins, 90 power sites, 10 cabins, four tourist flats and other facilities.)
Mr Cotter said he didn't count all the visitors that first year, but there were not enough to meet the guaranteed costs of the power supply.
The camp had to pay for 13 power poles on the road to Makarora from the Hawea turn-off and for $400 to $500 worth of supply a year.
If the camp didn't use that much power, it would have to pay the difference.
After some negotiation, Mr Cotter managed to get the guarantee down to $240 but even then could not use that much power and had to pay the extra.
Mr and Mrs Cotter did not live on site and ran the camp from their house at Lake Hawea.
The present camp managers' house was built for Mike and Michelle in 1989.
The Cotters' six children - Mike, Paul, Mary, Anne, Jo and Jimmy - were educated at St Kevins College and Teschemakers at Oamaru.
Their holiday jobs were picking up rocks, planting and picking potatoes and cleaning the camp at 5am.
"We were almost happy to stay at boarding school," Mike recalled.
The Lake Hawea tip on Domain Rd was a "treasure" and Mr Cotter loved taking the camp rubbish there.
"Now, all the rubbish is taken to Wanaka and Queenstown. But that was a great tip. Man alive, we used to get some great things there," Mr Cotter recalled.
One of Mike's first jobs at the camp was as messenger.
"When we first started, we were on a party line. It was a full-time job doing messages to campers, but now with texting etcetera, we never get bothered."
His mother Margie had been "very wise keeping home away from work, and they got away with it. They did it very well," Mike recalled.
Now the camp has managers on site, but in the old days, it used to operate by honesty box. Regulars would arrive, set up, write their names on a slate and pay when they left.
"The fact that you did trust them, they responded to that. Some people left their names and their car numbers and we didn't even know who they were," Mr Cotter recalled.
Mr Cotter also used to go around the camp with a little brown leather bag and receipt book, and on one memorable night went home with $100.
"I said to Margie, this camp might be all right. One hundred dollars in a day. It was fantastic, I thought."
As trained first-aiders and firefighters, the Cotters are always ready to help but are thankful no major mishaps have occurred.
"The scariest thing we had was a fire not too long after we first started. I saw smoke and people running so I went and got the fire engine and met Margie.
"By the time I got back with the fire engine, campers had organised themselves with buckets from the lake and people were picking up other people's tents and shifting them . . .
"A lot of people weren't there and there were cameras and sleeping bags everywhere and the only complaint I got afterwards was that one fella got the wrong colour plastic bucket . So I think we got it all back together very well," Mr Cotter said.
As years went on, campers began buying properties at Lake Hawea, more families began arriving and new generations of older families arrived.
Mike said he never judged people on their arrival.
Many had just worked a long day, packed up their kids and cars, driven a long way over a dusty road and had built up a good head of steam by the time they got to Lake Hawea.
The next morning, things were always different, he said.
Managing a camp required a great deal of diplomacy, especially in dealing with complaints. One of the biggest complaints of all was about a young man shooting from a vehicle in the camp.
It turned out to be Jimmy, doing "pest control", Mr Cotter recalled.
Other times, Mr Cotter used to delight in ordering campers out, when he knew they were leaving anyway, to keep complaining neighbours happy. But the complaints were few and far between.
The campers and Cotters thrived on tolerance, trial and error and willingness to learn, and many of the "kicked out" are regular returnees.
The Cotters hope to relinquish the reins next year once a purchaser has been found. But until then, they are looking forward to another golden summer in their little slice of unsophisticated paradise on the shores of Lake Hawea.
