Rex, who’s originally from Palmerston, had two one-year stints working as a cook and living in staff quarters on the premises, while his wife-to-be, Diane, who was from Brisbane, was a waitress on a working holiday.
Rex: "The manager, Nancy Williams, she got us together, she played Cupid.
"She says, ‘oh Rex, why don’t you take little Diane out?’ and I say, ‘oh, bloody Australians’, and then Diane actually asked me out.
"We actually did our courtship, a lot of it, on the [original bubble-car] gondolas, they used to stop the gondola for us, halfway down, we would be swinging in mid-air for, usually, 10 or 15 minutes."
The couple, both 20 at the time, married in Palmerston on June 15, 1974.
They’ve subsequently lived in Dunedin, but have often returned to Queenstown — and also celebrated their 25th and 40th wedding anniversaries by dining at Skyline.
