Legend’s fine spell ends

• Published date: 26 August 2021
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

David Crow, 88, who died at the Lake Wakatipu Care Home after suffering a stroke, had lived in the resort since 1962, and is best remembered as a weatherman, a jazz aficionado and one of life’s gentlemen.

Before moving here he’d been a meteorologist around the country, and during his last stint, in Invercargill, bought a crib at the old Queenstown Motor Park.

Very soon after shifting here, a woman who’d been keeping records at the historic Brisbane Street weather enclosure asked if he’d like to take over.

Remarkably, he then proceeded to take daily recordings, almost without fail, for the next 59 years — till just two-and-a-half months ago.

He and his late wife, Dorothy, had a house, known as the ‘Crow’s Nest’, built on Arthurs Point’s highest spot.

Having to read the weather resulted in many a tortuous early-morning drive down a narrow and windy road, which the council later named ‘Crows Nest Road’.

Occasionally he’d ring his offsider Stuart Maclean and say, ‘‘Stuart, do you think you could do the weather for me? I’m snowed in’’.

Till he retired, David and Dorothy had the town’s TAB sports betting agency.

Their third and final location was an arts and craft shop, Spiderweb, about where Fergburger is today — its back walls were plastered with weather maps.

In the mid-’80s, his neighbour, broadcaster Chas Drader, persuaded him to do weather reports for his new radio station, later Q92FM.

His bulletins would take about 15 minutes — ‘‘time wasn’t so important then’’, he told Mountain Scene.

He even broadcast from a hot air balloon, a yacht and the top of Deer Park Heights.

When More FM bosses pulled the plug on him in 2015, he told Scene: ‘‘It’s the people that sit in their big fat bloody offices and smoke cigars and drink cups of coffee and do nothing else, they just decided they didn’t want me.’’

He continued...