Canadian songstress and Kiwi PM form unlikely duo
17 Mar 2008
Canadian country singer Shania Twain and New Zealand's Prime Minister have teamed up to officially open a spectacular high country walking track.
Twain and Prime Minister Helen Clark have together opened the Motatapu track, a three day tramp in the mountains between Wanaka and Arrowtown, which crosses over land now owned by the Canadian born singer.
The route of the "Twain Track" was agreed in a 2004 deal with Twain and her husband Mutt Lange when they bought the two pastoral leases of Motatapu and Soho Stations. The couple financed the track, and two huts en route.
Before they purchased Motatapu Station the trust had repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to negotiate access across it with the former owners.
When word of the pending sale leaked out, the trust wrote to the Overseas Investment Commission to seek access for Te Araroa as a condition of sale.
"As it turned out, the Langes were happy to put the track in," said Te Araroa CEO Geoff Chapple. "It fitted with their philosophy of back country use. One Canadian country singer Shania, and one Zambian-born, South African-raised, music producer, Mutt, have shown great generosity in personally financing a a 28-kilometre extension of Te Araroa through some of the South Island's most dramatic high country. If every landowner was as generous with access we'd have our track finished within a year."
The track is part of Te Araroa, a walkway that will eventually extend from Cape Reinga to Bluff.
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