When newlyweds, Toni and John Glover bought the Kinloch Wilderness Retreat, their neighbours put bets on whether they’d last out the year.

Toni had left a career in the U.K. as a high-flying sales and marketing director for a tour operator travelling all over the world. “I saw a lot of properties and a lot of places.”  John was a Yorkshire engineer, who loved skiing and the mountains of the South Island. The couple hadn’t been together long – but Toni was studying tourism policy planning management and had big ideas about the future of tourism.

That was 22 years ago. Today those neighbours are good friends, and Toni and John’s dream, to find a place that would deeply nourish the soul of those who visited, has only got stronger.

Owners, Toni and John Glover

When you’re self sufficient, sustainable is simply sensible

The Glover’s approach has been shaped in part by the challenges of working and living an hour from Queenstown in a wilderness location at the head of Lake Whakatipu, down a dead-end road from Glenorchy.

Sustainability wasn’t a word used in the early days – it was just a matter of common sense. A long way off the main highway to Queenstown, transporting both visitors and supplies meant carefully working out what needs to leave, using the same transport that had brought what needed to arrive. There was never any room for carelessness or waste.

Toni says, “Being in Kinloch we've had to do a lot of stuff ourselves. We’ve got our own solar power, our own bore for water supply and treatment, waste treatment, and all those sorts of things that go wrong constantly. So, you’re constantly having to think of how to solve problems – and I guess how to solve problems for the long term.”

That meant a change in the way business planning was done, from looking at the next financial year to being far more future-focused. Toni and John began to think in decades rather than years. Toni says, “We’ve very much gone away from thinking about return on investment to looking at the right thing to do. What’s the intelligent thing to do for the very long term?”

Travelling to Glenorchy the low-impact way

In 2016, the couple went further, first buying a hybrid, followed by two electric vehicles and installing a Tesla charging point. From July this year, Kinloch Lodge also has UBCO electric bikes available to rent so people can journey into nature in a quiet, carbon-zero way.   

Toni says, “We're taking passengers in fully electric vehicles and have been doing that for about four or five years. And that's about telling that story and having that sustainable influence through every single part of the estate. From how they arrive to how they are treated - the people piece of the whole thing is very important. Everything that we're trying to do is a talking point.”

This summer, Kinloch Lodge will start offering low-impact day trip packages using electric transport from Queenstown. They’ve teamed up with Nomad Safaris to transport guests to and from Glenorchy in an electric bus.

Reducing food miles with local and homegrown goods

Toni and John’s love of good healthy, regeneratively farmed or organic food is another important part of the story. They’ve cut back their food waste by keeping the menu as fresh, organic and streamlined as possible. For example, Akaroa salmon arrives in Queenstown on a Friday morning and is on the plate at Kinloch the same evening.

Toni says, “We create beautifully balanced organic meals. They can be done with a meat protein or fish, very dish can be made vegan or vegetarian – and there are always heaps of vegetables. It’s very nourishing food that makes you just feel better.”

The Lodge reduce their food miles by keeping chickens and growing their own vegetables and herbs. Of course, the chickens get first dibs on the food waste. The rest - right down to paper napkins and kitchen towels is composted.

Breakfast at Kinloch

Building for the future

If the food is nourishing – so is the place itself. Toni says, “We’ve got the best air, the best water, the best scenery. You get a lot of energy from the mountains. We’ve an earth chakra point (a place of renowned spiritual energy) just up the road.”

When you’re guardians of such a special place, you build accordingly. Toni and John invested in passive low energy cabins a few years ago. Designed to blend with the environment and made with locally-sourced green building technology the Ecoscapes have been a runaway success. In peak season they’re booked out months ahead. They’re so popular the Glowers are building another Ecoscape cabin this year.

The 1868 lodge was fully refitted in 2022, with insulation and glazing upgraded to be closer to new building standards. The Glovers are now progressively retrofitting their Wilderness Rooms with better insulation and smart controls. When they build new, they build for climate change using robust insulated panels and triple glazing.

Toni puts it down to always making sure decisions are made based on their values. “We just did what needs to be done for the environment our people and our guests.” The Lodge is on the way to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, with electric and hybrid vehicles, solar power, and energy-efficient infrastructure.

Kinloch Wilderness Ecoscapes

Restore yourself in nature

Kinloch Lodge is all about restoring yourself in nature, and Toni and John create beautiful spaces where you can rest and regenerate or come together in community. Their yurt in the beech forest is a tranquil space to practice yoga or meditation. It’s also used as a group meeting space for the seasonal events and activities hosted by the Lodge.

This year the Lodge is building a new treatment area, with a sauna, spa, massage rooms,  and ice shower. It will be called the Wai Journey into Nature massage and treatment centre, and wai means water. The new centre sits amongst the bush next to the yurt and is being constructed entirely out of recycled building waste.

Yoga class in the yurt

Committed to community

Accommodation is provided for those who work at the Kinloch Wilderness Retreat, not only for the obvious benefits, but also as part of building a community of like-minded people focused on the health benefits of living amongst nature and doing what they can to mitigate climate change. Every evening at 5pm they stop what they’re doing to enjoy a meal together.

The people who work at the Lodge do so not only for the wage (although the team this year did share in 50% of the profits) but for everything the lodge stands for. Tony says, “We want them to do what they love and have time to interact with our guests.” That’s meant things like getting a robotic lawn mower powered by solar to free up someone to do the gardening work they do enjoy. “All we're doing is looking at things in a more simplistic, long-term basis to make life better for our team, and that influences the way they interact with our visitors too.”

Kinloch supports community in other ways. They financially support all Glenorchy charities, while John consults for Shaping Our Future and works in mental health facilitation with the Headlight trust. They educate tourists and staff about local environmental issues and ways to minimise their carbon footprints. And they also share the cultural significance of the area and have met with local Iwi to obtain permission to tell their stories of the land.

A memorable journey into nature

This commitment to offering a deep, rich, sustaining, and sustainable experience is probably why Toni welcomes some of her guests back again, and again, and again.

Toni says, “We love that. We want our guests to come here, and they won’t necessarily know why it feels so amazing. But just to feel that way and want to emulate it. Just slowly spreading that message about food and wellbeing and wellbeing for the land.”

For more information about sustainability at Kinloch Wilderness Retreat here.