Pity those poor sods dressed for dinner over at Downtown Abbey. The Lords and Ladies are stuck with a wee park out front, while we have Queenstown.
But lately, sitting in the foreignness of Queenstown traffic jams, I've been haunted by the closing line of an Eagles song about the decline of California. Could The Last Resort be about Queenstown, too?They called it ParadiseI don't know whyCall some place Paradise -Kiss it goodbye.
I'm not sure Paradise and Queenstown can continue their co existence. By itself, the town doesn't seem up to the job of preserving its surroundings from the uglier downsides of its tourism success. It's got bad heartburn digesting present growth - and worse will follow with the next gutful, which will be the different experience of digesting the Chinese middle classes.
Undaunted, we want convention centres to fan further expansion. Next we'll be thinking a wilderness monorail to speed more visitors to Milford Sound wasn't that crazy after all.
The most pressing growth problem is that Queenstown's runaway success is turning its postcards of paradise into postcodes of suburbia.
Working people need housing. There has to be a way. To help do this, the Queenstown Lakes District Council is now eyeing its chances of niftily sidestepping our pesky Resource Consent processes, by using the new express route of the Housing Accords.
This can be used as a ''listen but ignore'' approach to whingeing local nimbies, and their time wasting objections.
Some types of resorts actually prosper while being trashed by developers. Witness Surfers, or Waikiki, where glitzy entrepreneurs have succeeded in building Disney. They are fun in their own particular way, but that brand of entrepreneurism can't work for a resort whose meal ticket is its outdoors.
And heady entrepreneurism has been the soul of Queenstown. It is an admirable, gutsy, quality, but it is beginning to overachieve. There is a growing part of the community which no longer cheers wildly at the latest tourism growth announcement.
Naysayers aren't viewed kindly in a positive place like Queenstown. But maybe we've reached the point where we need to listen more to the killjoys, and less to heroic entrepreneurs?Arrowtown, where I live, is Queenstown's second most visited attraction.
In my three years on the board of Arrowtown's business association, I've watched the main issue change from building visitor numbers, to coping with success. When visitors can neither pee nor park, we have what is politely termed ''serious infrastructure issues''.
But worse is the constant pressure to suburbanise a nationally important historic village. It's like watching a Punch and Judy show - rebuffed, the developers come back, and back again.
It's only mild hyperbole to say Queenstown is to tourism what Fonterra is to dairy. When Fonterra has a quality scare that threatens our dairy reputation, it's of national importance.
The country wrings its hands, and government officials get pesky. But the truth is, a Fonterra quality glitch will be fixed in its next batch. Development harm to the Queenstown environs can't.
Queenstown is still capable of resource brilliance. Recently it opened the superb new trails network, which owes much to enthusiastic local sponsorship.
Individual risk built show stopping golf courses. Robert ''Mutt'' Lange has astonished, giving 500sq km of stunning high country to be protected and enjoyed.
I can't tell QLDC the answers to creeping suburbia and stretched infrastructure, because there must be a hundred of them. (They've scored a tough job). But there are three truths we can't ignore.
Nationally, Queenstown is too precious to be messed around by any short term, ''ugly but does the job'' approach to housing.
It is beyond ridiculous that a local council be stuck with the main infrastructure costs of the country's tourism showpiece. This is a guaranteed recipe for cheapskate mediocrity.
And we need a more careful attitude to encouraging growth. It's not all worth it. Growth wasn't the 11th Commandment.
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
