FALLING FOR ARROWTOWN
Nearly 20 years ago, Sam Gruar headed south from Auckland to go snowboarding, and inevitably ended up in Queenstown. Snow, parties, scenery. Awesome.
When his mum passed away not long after, she left Gruar some money. “So I spent half of it on being a young lunatic, trying to get my helicopter licence and things like that, but then I decided that getting a deposit on a house was the best thing.”
He looked at Queenstown, but even then, in 2005, houses were really pricey. “The only place we could get was in Arrowtown, but yeah, we loved it.”
When he went back to Auckland, and then to Spain, he rented out the house. But in 2011, Gruar and his wife PJ returned to New Zealand and headed to Arrowtown, with ideas of running a bar or restaurant, given their backgrounds in hospitality.
“Back then, all my friends in Queenstown thought we were absolutely mad, trying to do this out here, because it was very much a quiet little feeder village
