Tootsie speaks halting English. There’s ambient music wafting around and I’m being offered calming or energising tea. There are veils of white cotton masking private spaces. I hear a man arriving at the front desk, sheepishly whispering he is 15 minutes early.

My hands are being stroked. ‘Beautiful hands’ she says. ‘Music hands.’ Later she will insist on massaging them, and I will be surprised how dry they have become.

Tootsie is Fijian. She tells me it’s not her real name, as if she’s sharing a secret. Her husband works in an apartment block. She loves New Zealand – but in the four years since they arrived here, they have never once been outside Queenstown. They don’t have a car. They work six days a week, and on the seventh they sleep, wash and shop. She’s good at her work, but it’s a Low Skilled Job, so her three sons have to live in Fiji with their grandmother. I guess all the money they earn gets sent home.

Queenstown is full of people here to scratch a wage to fund something else. More Tootsies. Gap year kids or young adults on work visas, here for the thrill-seeking lifestyle that the town lives for. This involves hurtling down from something high, cold or wet (often all three), barely attached to anything solid, or inside something flimsy. There’s usually an upside down moment involved. Winter and summer there are adrenaline thrills for every taste. For the retired, there’s golf.

The stunning scenery – including The Remarkables – provides the backdrop to it all. Queenstown sits on a huge L-shaped lake, with mountains rising on every side. It’s the base for your magic moment. Unless you’re poor and from Fiji.

Tour companies buy one another up in the pursuit of scale. Kids timeshare beds to minimise accommodation costs. There are sordid bars downtown with flies, cheap greasy food and Sky Sports on beer splattered TVs. It’s empty until midday.

Once I’ve finished with Tootsie I make my way to L&G’s in the Frankton suburb. They’re friends of I, putting me up for my last few days. I’m introduced to H at dinner, and after the fourth bottle of ‘savvy’ she’s gazing lovingly at my manicured fingers. Tootsie has done a great job – my nails look fabulous, I feel metropolitan again, and most importantly I can play guitar properly now. But I struggle to keep up with the drinking and the conversation. It’s been weeks since I talked to anyone for more than an hour. I’m finding it tough to follow G’s nested tales, with more side roads than Highway 6, but he makes me feel like a long lost mate. I am completely at home.

They tell me about Queenstown. L was born here and it’s grown with and around her. In those days it was a well kept secret, a working town, but now it’s a land grab. The infrastructure can’t cope. Roads are constantly being built, then dug up for more sewerage, more cable. The town sprawls up the slopes of the hills and mountains. You can see where sections of bush have been cleared, and where it is being poisoned ready for the next batch of precariously balanced houses and apartment blocks. On the side of the main road, the buildings leak water and condensation from ‘relaxed’ construction standards and cowboy developers. Several have collapsed with the slides. And still the property boom goes on. In the cool suburb of Kelvin Heights, there’s a riot of perched Look At Me houses, some in chrome, glass and marble, others dressed as new Alpine Chalets, or baronial mansions, all edging out the tradesmen who used to live here. No house costs under a million. I don’t see a theatre, a cinema, an art gallery, a civic centre anywhere. But there is a hospital to set all those broken bones.

I drive to nearby Arrowtown, an old gold mining settlement. There’s a car park etched in by the river to hold a battalion of tourist tanks like mine, and a hundred coaches. The buildings are all prospectors’ cottages and general stores – except they are not: they front burger bars, tourist tat and mining ‘experiences’. The whole place is just laminated. One day Queenstown will be like this – a homage to itself. Maybe it is already.

I could do with something authentic: the setting is, after all, stunning. So G suggests we drive up to Skippers. We take a less used route out of Queenstown, and turn off onto a thin ledge of unmade road that rises giddyingly high, and then plunges deep into a narrow gorge. The wheels of his VW sway with the contours as we spin and twist our way through. The track envelops the car, and the windscreen wipers leave an arc of dust. I feel like it’s only a matter of time till we have our Michael Caine moment, ‘blowing the bloody doors off ‘. Still, G is in the middle of a fascinating story about his brother who at 70 still ice-skates naked. He looks across at me to make sure I like the story. I really do, but maybe not right now.

The reason we’re here is to see the real Back Country, and to visit B who lives out this way. We screech off the path. I’m so glad to be in one piece. Maybe I’ll walk the twenty kilometres back.

B is welcoming us in his trilby and shorts. Inside his hut there’s a rusting range, rows of re-read books, a dog with a limp, and a set of hula hoops. I’m introduced as a musician friend. ‘Ah mate, give us a tune!’ He scoots off to get a guitar. I use my time-worn excuse not to play to strangers – ‘I’d love to but I’m left handed.’ ‘Oh mate that’s perfect – so am I.’ My heart sinks. B takes a guitar out of a dusty gig bag. ‘But this is right handed’ I say. ‘Really mate? Well, play it anyway!’

Playing a guitar the wrong way is like being faced with a piano where the whole keyboard is reversed. In theory it might be feasible, but it just does your head in. B picks up a hula hoop and starts cavorting with it (amazingly well, I should say). I’ve no choice. He plugs the guitar into a wooden speaker, I try my best to tune it. It’s loud. He’s hula hooping away and G is egging me on. I make an absolute racket as if I’m a heavy metal freak, and I notice I’m being looked at in awe, with more reverence than any normal gig of mine.

I’ve passed the test. At least I didn’t have to chop wood in a red checked shirt, or clear out the latrine. The beers come out. So does the sushi we brought with from town. We go sit outside and get chomped by sandflies. We look out over the pink grey and yellow gorge and I feel that life is sometimes so surreal you must just give yourself to it. We see some white water rafters setting up. We can’t get away from the nonsense even here.

Right now I’m flying over The Ditch to Sydney. At Queenstown airport I said goodbye to L&G. They’ve been welcoming, graceful and great company and I would love to spend more time with them. Just like the beautiful country they are part of.

I’m checking in, and the dour woman tells me I can’t take my guitar in the cabin. I tell her it’s a practice guitar in a soft case, built especially to go in overhead lockers. She phones someone. ‘I’ve got this English guy here with a full sized guitar, and he’s making trouble’. I repeat myself, and tell her it would be the first time I’ve been refused taking it with, on any airline anywhere. I tell her I’m taking it to the gate. An hour later, she’s the one at the gate and tells me the cabin crew have refused to let me on with it. I insist I’ll take it to the plane and see. ‘I want you to know I’ve been here seven weeks, and you are the first New Zealander I’ve not liked. I find you rude and unhelpful’. She replies, ‘But you’re flying Qantas – and I’m an Aussie.’