Arrowtown Village Association chair Nick Fifield’s spent more than a year developing the Arrowtown Audio Tour — launched at the town’s Lakes District Museum last Wednesday — which he believes is world-class, and unlike anything he’s come across before.
Originally from the UK — he grew up in Berkhamsted, just outside London, which dates back to 1066 — Fifield says he’s always had an affinity with history, something he attributes to his grandfather, who was an archaeologist.
In a way, he says, his new app is for him.
After moving to Arrowtown in 2018, Fifield says he wanted to understand the local history better, noting the town’s "unique character clearly recalls the period in which it was founded".
"You can still sense the past here; it’s largely unchanged."
Aware Buckingham St was often mistaken for the faux "wild west" reconstruction or film set, he wanted to correct that misconception, so last year started a TikTok channel, producing video snapshots explaining the stories behind Arrowtown’s historic buildings.
Through that, he made some "great connections" with descendants of early families in the area.
Having wondered why someone hadn’t created an audio tour for Arrowtown, "it struck me, why not do it myself?"’
"I never thought I’d end up creating something on this scale," he says.
"It’s grown and evolved, turning into so much more than I expected and it’s been deeply satisfying to have completed this project.
"It has been a very personal and emotional journey."
Fifield, who’s also on the Arrowtown Promotion and Business Association and Arrowtown Charitable Trust boards, says he did extensive research and pored over script development, initially writing for a single narrator "simply delivering historical facts".
"But it became clear that the real intrigue was in telling the stories of the people who lived and worked there.
"So I broadened the tour’s scope to focus on the people, including representations of the historical figures who join the listener to tell their stories first-hand."
He worked with a radio journo on the stories and narration and then linked up with a voice talent agency in the UK to find genuine Welsh, Scottish, Cockney and Irish accents for over 12 historical characters.
Kiwi audio production company Crescendo created an "extra layer of cinematic drama", firmly rooting the stories back to New Zealand, while Queenstown-based creative agency Whitelaw Mitchell developed the brand and custom app to showcase the tour, and the Lakes District Museum provided historical images to give context and a sense of place to the app experience.
The Arrowtown Audio Tour features two separate tours detailing 35 historic sites and locations across more than two and a-half hours of self-guided audio — users download the app, provide their own headphones and head to Arrowtown to jump in.
The ‘Buckingham St Tour’ includes the avenue of trees, miners cottages, shops and hotels, and the ‘Churches Tour’ takes in Arrowtown’s four historic churches, Rose Douglas Park, the cemetery and Cenotaph.
There are also three bonus tracks covering Arrowtown’s founding as a gold rush town, the story of the Arrowtown Gaol, and infamous buccaneer, Captain William ‘Bully’ Hayes.
"Arrowtown’s history is not that of kings and queens or world events, the stories are of ordinary, albeit pioneering, people and their everyday lives," Fifield says.
"So my aim was to tell meaningful, relatable human stories that truly connect with every listener."
A fan of audio tours, Fifield says his creation has a higher level of story-telling, narrative characterisation and audio production than anything else he’s heard across the world.
"Ultimately the goal of this project is to help educate and entertain visitors to Arrowtown, as well as provide a resource for Arrowtown and district residents, particularly children, to enhance their understanding, creating a sense of connection and belonging by faithfully telling the stories of those who have gone before."
The Arrowtown Audio Tour app is available for purchase through the Apple App stores and Google Play for Android coming soon.
