The rise, fall and resurrection of the Bush Creek Rink.
Cold fingers pull laces on stiff leather – breath hanging in the air, the waft of woodsmoke, the cackle of childish laughter. I flip my collar and sink into the wool of my jersey. This isn’t the time or place for modern fabrics. Grabbing my hockey stick, I step onto the ice and take my first stride into the past.
Carved from the bush on the banks of the Arrow River, a moment away from the gold rush bustle of Arrowtown, the Bush Creek Ice Rink is a time capsule. Ice skating and Arrowtown go together like wool and whiskey. Ice aficionados have been lacing up on local frozen ponds for a century, but it took some ingenuity to formalise things with a rink. Rumour has it that in the late 1950s, inspired by a modest outdoor rink in Cromwell, Arrowtowners Jimmy Wilcox and Alan Hamilton cleared a patch of land and diverted the Arrow River (shhhh) to form the Nairn Street Rink on the southeast edge of town.
Complete with a potbelly stove, skate hire, changing sheds, music, mulled wine and lollie bags for a shilling, the rink opened in 1954 and was an overnight sensation. Skaters would drive for hours to have a glide. Some came from as far as Invercargill – photos from the time show lines of buses bearing out-of-town skaters parked nearby. An ice hockey rivalry developed between the ‘Arrows’ and the Queenstown team, who had their own outdoor rink, and Arrowtown hosted the national figure skating champs in 1966.
But why have one rink when you can have two? Further upstream, burrowed into the hill and stuffed into the shade, a smaller cousin to the Nairn Rink soon sprang up. Rough around the edges, Bush Creek made up for its lack of size with, according to those in the know, better ice. Something about colder water and more shade; as with locals protecting a surf break, sometimes it’s better not to ask.
Then, like the water that gets between the cracks of a rock, turning it to ice and eventually splitting it, time took its toll. At Nairn Street, a switch from using river water to tapping the bore-sourced town supply, which needs lower temperatures to freeze, made the rink less viable. In the early eighties, it was bowled by council. Bush Creek lasted longer, but in 1996 the fully-enclosed Queenstown Ice Arena opened, and the novelty of alfresco skating was usurped by the consistency of indoor ice.
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Back when winters were colder and performance outerwear was 100% wool. Nairn Street Rink, 1956. PHOTO: Lakes District Museum, REF# EL5565
So began the dark times. Nairn Street Rink became the Wilcox Green recreation reserve and is now more home to dog walkers than to skaters. Bush Creek was abandoned and fell into disrepair. The formerly manicured gravel was at the mercy of seasonal floods, hoons on dirtbikes and the blitzkrieg of weeds, summer bonfires and wilding pine.
The rink faded from view and, as the decades passed, the risk was real that it would be forgotten – forever. That all changed in 2021, when a group of Arrowtown residents started to think that it was now or never to save the rink. Well, not even save it. It was dead. This was a resurrection. Spearheaded by skaters, some sporting grey hair and motivated by cold nostalgia, the all-volunteer Bush Creek Ice Rink committee was formed. Shunning the limelight and insisting it was a community effort, they were reluctant for me to even name-check them in 1964. Sorry-not-sorry Bex, you’ve earned the shout-out. (The Bush Creek Ice Rink committee “rink leader”, Rebecca Dobson is from Māniatoto, where skating on frozen ponds is part of growing up.)
The team started cutting back brush and levelling the surface, first with garden tools and later with machinery. Arrowtowners, many with hazy memories of skating laps, just started turning up. Dribs and drabs at first, but eventually a community.
Volunteer contractors used remnant clay from the original rink to make a base, sand to level the ground and builders’ mix to top it all off. The ice was trickier. The best way to make it was debated, tried, tested, failed and tried again. This isn’t like making cubes for your G&T – this is a tennis court-sized rink (30 metres by 20 metres to be precise) that needs to be dead flat, frozen without bubbles or cracks. And you get one chance. And, thanks to climate change, that chance might only happen once per winter. By the winter of 2022, the pressure was on. It was make or melt.
But this isn’t a fairytale. It didn’t work. The ice was too thin, there were too many cracks, the surface wasn’t good enough, and for all the mahi that year, a rink didn’t emerge.
Undaunted, 2023 rounded, and the committee was back. Fresh knowledge in hand and leaning into the slow labour of making ice, they released and froze one thin layer of water at a time, at least 20 times over. The rink rose from the ashes, and so did the skaters. In June, the braziers were lit and they returned, skates, sticks and pucks in hand.
They returned, skates, sticks and pucks in hand. PHOTO: Bush Creek Ice Rink committee
Unfortunately, 2024 had different ideas. A spring flood jumped the banks of the Arrow and obliterated damn near everything. The manicured surface was a gouged, pockmarked boulder field, the levelling sand was gone. But the fire had been lit. This was no longer some hairbrained idea; the Bush Creek Rink was a part of Arrowtown, and Arrowtown wasn’t going to let it die again. A Community Quiz Night, a Give a Little campaign, people dug deep, both into the shingle and into their pockets, and before the first frost of 2024, they were ready to make ice. Once again, people say, skaters drove from Invercargill to skate at Bush Creek.
This winter, when the air turns cold and the stars come out at night, and your breath hangs in the air, spare a thought for the ice maker out on Bush Creek laying down another layer. Misting water into the frozen midnight air, cold hands, frozen feet. With every coat, the ice gets stronger and the bond to the past and the future forges into a frozen partnership. A bond that’s thicker than water and harder than ice.
Scott Kennedy
