Queenstown's wine region, Gibbston, seems to uncork a lot of interesting characters.
Take Dr Jane Shearer, who signs off herself as ‘author and life enthusiast’, but could have written ‘writer, blogger, singer-songwriter, house and garden designer, woodworker, public speaker, traveller, hiker and mountain biker’.
"I mean, I just love doing so many things — I’m a super-generalist."
And that’s not even counting her day job, which through her consultancy, resolutionz, helps people get funding to do scientific research.
Since 2002, she estimates she’s helped facilitate a billion dollars worth of funding — "that’s my very rough calculation, I lost track a while ago".
Jane grew up in Christchurch and gained a PhD in coal geology, her thesis, she’s ashamed to admit, being on Ohai’s coalfield — ironically, she now lives off Coal Pit Rd.
She and longtime partner Chris Nelson moved to Gibbston in 2013, partly due to the Christchurch quakes — "we were done with Christchurch" — and partly as they were into biking, hiking and skiing, and his parents then lived in Wanaka.
They bought six hectares off wine pioneer Greg Hay and initially lived in their barn while their house was built.
It was their third house Jane’s designed and she’s delighted it’s a high-performing timber home needing little heating.
As soon as the 2020 Covid lockdown was announced, she started a daily blog — she’d regretted not doing that when the Christchurch rumbles started.
She’s carried on her now-weekly blog ever since, posting it every Saturday night on her website, www.janeshearer.com.
Common topics are climate change, sustainability, polycrisis — "all the environmental crises that are hitting us at once" — and AI, "and then I intersperse them with more entertaining ones".
"I get most comments on things like, ‘should you have a basket or a tray in your dishwasher for cutlery?"’
Meanwhile, in December 2021 she started writing her first novel, Broken is Beautiful, from the idea of a woman making creations out of broken objects that were a feature of life during and after the quakes.
This month, she launches her second self-published novel, Threads of Connection, which features eco-terrorism and is set in Christchurch in 2030.
Also during Covid, Jane took up music again, learning the guitar and taking singing lessons with Queenstown’s Margaret O’Hanlon.
She also took up the cello again, and, as a singer-songwriter ("folk, rock, indie") performs on both instruments at open-mic sessions at, for example, Queenstown’s Sherwood.
"My guitar songwriting, a lot of it’s humorous — the song I got best known for is called Squashed Frog — then with my cello it’s easier to do serious music."
Jane says she’s skied since she was 13 on a school trip — "I went, ‘I belong here"’ — and nowadays is keen on ski touring.
And she took up mountain biking in the 1980s in Canada when it was quite new, "and went, ‘I love this’."
She and Chris have regularly undertaken big bike trips overseas, "typically somewhere between 1000 and 3000km".
"I mean [flying] probably conflicts in terms of thinking about impacts on the planet, but I love difference, I really love going to places where we can’t speak the language.
"I’m not interested in seeing the things other people have seen or they tell you you ought to see."
Asked what she loves most, Jane, who’s hoping to be in Mongolia when she turns 60 in June, says "it’s creating one way or another in written form, music form, design".
"That would be on a par with physical exercise, like doing a great [mountain bike] run on Hot Rod."
She says she never uses the term ‘bucket list’, "because my life would be more like a no-regrets life".
"So if I found I was terminally ill tomorrow, that would be most unfortunate because there’s plenty more I’d like to do.
"But I have packed in everything I possibly could in the time I’ve had."
On her website she says when she was in Madagascar, she asked why the bones of the dead were kept in larger houses than those occupied by the living, to be told, "you are dead far longer than you are alive".
"That sentiment parallels perfectly with my core tenet — I never know what will happen next so I’d best make the most of the time I have right now."
- Jane Shearer launches her novel, Threads of Connection, at Frankton Library on February 22 at 11am.
