Mount Cook Group

Last updated

Mount Cook Group was a New Zealand tourism and transport operator founded on 2 April 1912 [1] by Rodolph Lysaght Wigley. Originally a road transport business, the Mount Cook Tourist Company of New Zealand became a public company in 1928. By 1930 Wigley had built it into the largest tourist organisation in New Zealand, and it was renamed Mount Cook and Southern Lakes Tourist Company, the name adopted in the mid-1930s. [2] In 1976 it became The Mount Cook Group Ltd. [2] [3] The company was split in 1989 with various operations progressively sold off, with Air New Zealand retaining the airline businesses. [4] The company remained (on paper) until 17 June 2013 when it was amalgamated into Air New Zealand Associated Companies Limited, a holding company for Air New Zealand's various businesses (and current "owner" of Mount Cook Airline). [5]

Contents

Operations

Mount Cook Landlines

Rodolph Wigley's Mt. Cook Motor Car Service provided the first car transportation from Fairlie to the Hermitage in February 1906. The company owned four Darracq 40 and 60 hp service cars and carried mail and passengers. The business collapsed in November 1907 but in 1912 Wigley restarted operations as the Mount Cook Motor Co. Ltd. By 1918, there was a weekly service car between Mt Cook and Queenstown over the Lindis Pass using Cadillacs. The company depot was in Fairlie. [2] Rodolph Wigley's Mount Cook Motor Co, [4] later called Mount Cook Landlines, provided inter-city and sightseeing coach services. Originally providing services to the Aoraki / Mount Cook region of the South Island, the company grew to take over many other New Zealand bus companies: H&H of Invercargill, Luxury Landlines and Hawkes Bay Motor Co of the North Island. [4] In 1989 the Mount Cook Landline exchanged several routes with Newmans Coach Lines, the two companies each specialised to the South Island and North Island respectively. [4] When in 1989 Air New Zealand sold Mount Cook Group's non-airline assets to Tourism Holdings Limited, the latter scrapped the coach route services and the Mount Cook brand. [4]

Mount Cook Airline

In December 2019, Mount Cook Airline was merged into Air New Zealand and ceased operations. [6]

Mount Cook Freightlines

Mount Cook Freightlines was a trucking company which operated linehaul and rural freight services. It grew out of the general passenger/mail operation in 1925, and grew steadily a freight network around the South Island, and, later into the North Island. In its last few years it provided part of Air New Zealand's domestic cargo network. Mount Cook Freightlines was later purchased by F.W. McDowall Ltd.

Mount Cook Line Skifields

In 1921 Rodolph Wigley leased The Hermitage hotel from the Department of Tourist and Health Resorts and began expanding it, installing electricity and telegraph, catering for skaters and skiers and employing mountain guides. He introduced and developed skiing, mountain climbing and winter holidays. The company was the first to offer package holidays to tourists. In August 1923 Wigley and two guides became the first to climb Mt Cook in winter. [2] The first skifield in New Zealand was developed on Ball Glacier in Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park; the company opened another at Ohau. [7] Mount Cook Line Skifields developed and operated the Queenstown ski areas of Coronet Peak and The Remarkables, now owned by NZSki Ltd.

Mount Cook Ski Planes

The company developed ski plane conversions of Auster aircraft in its own workshops at Fairlie, in South Canterbury. [7] Now independently owned, Mount Cook Ski Planes operates Cessna 185s and Pilatus Porters, and is the only company to land scenic flights on the Tasman Glacier to this day. [8]

Other holdings

The Mount Cook company at various times owned or established many other tourism and transport businesses in New Zealand: [7]

Related Research Articles

Sir Charles William Feilden Hamilton was a New Zealand engineer who developed the modern jetboat, and founded the water jet manufacturing company, CWF Hamilton Ltd.

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park Park in New Zealand

Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park is in the South Island of New Zealand. Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, and the eponymous village lie within the park. The area was gazetted as a national park in October 1953 and consists of reserves that were established as early as 1887 to protect the area's significant vegetation and landscape.

Mackenzie Basin An area of land in the South Island of New Zealand

The Mackenzie Basin, popularly and traditionally known as the Mackenzie Country, is an elliptical intermontane basin located in the Mackenzie and Waitaki Districts, near the centre of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest such basin in New Zealand. Historically famous mainly for sheep farming, the sparsely populated area is now also a popular tourism destination.

Coronet Peak Mountain in New Zealand

Coronet Peak is a commercial skifield in Queenstown, New Zealand located seven kilometres west of Arrowtown, on the southern slopes of the 1,649-metre peak which shares its name. A popular ski resort in the Southern Hemisphere, Coronet Peak offers a long snow season, well received skiing and snowboarding terrain and lift systems.

Ohau (skifield)

Ohau is a small commercial skifield in the foothills of New Zealand's Southern Alps, near the boundary between the Otago and Canterbury regions, and close to the western shore of the lake of the same name. The skifield was originally developed by the Mount Cook and Southern Lakes Tourist Co. The field's service town, Lake Ohau Alpine Village, is located on the shore of the lake to the south of the skifield.

Chateau Tongariro Hotel in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand

Chateau Tongariro, also known as the Grand Chateau, is a New Zealand hotel and resort complex, located close to Whakapapa skifield on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu, It is close to the volcanic peaks of Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe, within the boundaries of Tongariro National Park, New Zealand's oldest National Park. The building was completed in 1929 and, despite extensive refurbishment, still retains much of the style of the pre-Depression era.

Mount Cook Airline was a regional airline based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Formerly part of the Mount Cook Group and latterly a subsidiary of Air New Zealand, it operated scheduled services throughout the country under the Air New Zealand Link brand. In December 2019, the brand name was retired with all services operated under the Air New Zealand banner.

Mount Dobson Ski field in the South Island of New Zealand

Mount Dobson is a ski resort in the South Island of New Zealand. Located 2.25 hours from Christchurch and 3 hours from Queenstown, it claims an easy access road, the highest car park of any ski resort in New Zealand, and the earliest start to the season in 2006. It features a chair lift, a T-bar and a beginner's ski tow, serving 14 trails over an area of 400 hectares. The resort caters primarily at skiers of intermediate ability, with a 1:2:1 ratio of beginner/intermediate/advanced slopes.

Skiing in New Zealand

New Zealand is a major skiing destination in the Southern Hemisphere, due to its high latitude, mountainous terrain, and well-developed economy and tourism industry. The ski season in New Zealand starts in mid June and in good winters can run through to the start of November.

Sir Henry Rodolph Wigley was a pilot, entrepreneur and pioneer of the New Zealand tourism industry.

Air Safaris is a New Zealand scenic flight and air charter company based at the Lake Tekapo Airport located 2.8 km west of the town of Lake Tekapo, off State Highway 8 in the Mackenzie District of New Zealand. The airline operates from 5 bases, Tekapo, Franz Josef, Glentanner, Twizel and Mt Cook airports. The company logo is a stylised chamois; these are wild goat-like antelope which inhabits the region of the South Island High Country.

The Hermitage Hotel Building in Mount Cook , New Zealand

The Hermitage Hotel in Mount Cook Village, New Zealand, is a hotel located inside the Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, 65 kilometres (40 mi) north of Twizel. The current building is from 1958 and forms the main part of Mount Cook Village, being the only large building.

Glenorchy Air is a scenic flight and air charter company based at Queenstown Airport, New Zealand. The company was founded by Janet and Robert Rutherford in 1992, with just one aeroplane, a Cessna 185. With the expansion of the business, a second aircraft, a Piper PA-32-300 Cherokee Six, was purchased in 1996. The Cessna 185 was sold in 2003 when it was replaced by a new Gippsland GA8 Airvan. The company took delivery of a second Airvan in 2013 and a third replaced the Cherokee Six in 2015. In 2017 Glenorchy Air purchased a fourth GA8, taking the fleet number to five, including a Cessna 172. A GA8 was sold in May 2020 to Air Kaikoura.

Trojan Holdings is a major privately held New Zealand tourism company, based in Queenstown.

Rodolph Lysaght Wigley, known as "Wigs" to his friends, was a New Zealand businessman from Fairlie in South Canterbury, and pioneer of the New Zealand tourism industry. He founded the Mount Cook Group of tourism and transport companies, which were taken over by his son Harry Wigley. He was a son of Thomas Henry Wigley, MLC and sheep-farmer.

Newmans Air Airline

Newmans Airways Limited, trading as Newmans Air, was a wholly owned airline subsidiary of Newmans Group and served the New Zealand domestic market between 1985 and 1987. It was set up in direct competition with Mount Cook Airline to serve tourist routes. In 1986, Ansett Australia purchased a 50% shareholding, increasing this to 100% in 1987 when the airline was rebranded Ansett New Zealand.

John Davies (New Zealand businessman) New Zealand businessman and mayor

Sir John Stratton Davies is a New Zealand businessman and a former mayor of Queenstown. Through Trojan Holdings Ltd, he is a major owner of South Island tourism companies.

RealNZ New Zealand company

RealNZ is a New Zealand tourism company based in Queenstown. The company offers a range of travel, cruises and excursions in Queenstown, Milford Sound / Piopiotahi, Te Anau, Fiordland and Stewart Island / Rakiura. It also operates two skifields Cardrona Alpine Resort, and Treble Cone, and the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch. The company is the successor of a series of acquisitions in the South Island tourist sector over more than 60 years.The brand RealNZ was launched in October 2021 to bring together multiple brands and businesses including Real Journeys that were previously part of the Wayfare Group, although some of the businesses have retained individual branding.

Two Thumb Range

The Two Thumb Range is a range of mountains in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand's South Island. It is located to the east of Lake Tekapo and has several peaks which rise to around 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). The southern end of the range contains one of Canterbury's main skifields, Mount Dobson.

References

  1. ↑ "Certificate of Incorporation". New Zealand Companies Office. Retrieved 13 January 2015.[ permanent dead link ]
  2. 1 2 3 4 Wigley - One Family on the Road to Tourism on ancestry.com website, viewed 2013-10-31
  3. ↑ Ogilvie, Gordon. 'Wigley, Rodolph L. 1881 - 1946' in Dictionary of New Zealand
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 John McCrystal On the Buses in New Zealand: from charabancs to the coaches of today, Grantham House, Wellington, 2007
  5. ↑ "Certificate of Amalgamation". New Zealand Companies Office. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  6. ↑ Anthony, John (31 March 2019). "Air New Zealand considering merging Air Nelson and Mount Cook with jet business". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 Wigley, Harry The Mount Cook Way: The first fifty years of the Mount Cook Company Auckland: Collins, 1979
  8. ↑ Mount Cook Ski Planes Archived 9 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine company website, viewed 2013-13-13
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.