When I was at the Queenstown Creative Writers' Group this week, some of the women there talked about the challenge of finding friend groups in the Wakatipu. I'd had a very similar conversation with another woman over coffee on Monday. At the Writers' Group, we all agreed if someone had said, "It will take you ten years to find community in this place," we would have scoffed. Ten years? That's ridiculously long. I knew it would be three years before I felt settled into the area; I'd done the shifting thing before. However, ten years it has been for me and for them.

It's always a relief when you find other people are in the same boat as you – that's a tribe of a sort, if not a very successful one! We discussed why we might have found the Wakatipu to be such a challenging place to find community.

It could be stage of life; we are all post-children, they are post-work or work remotely. There are times in your life it is easy to make friends. Those are the times when there are a lot of similar people all wanting to make new friends. First year University is one of those times  – lots of people in a new place, away from families and existing friend groups and with plenty of time in which to make new friends, and energy for making friends and a whole range of life activities. University is all about embracing newness. Like so many things in life, it's a time that's easy to undervalue when you are experiencing it (given all the anxiety around making friends, coping with classes, getting good grades...). However, there is zero point in telling kids who are off to University how great a time they will have when you look at it from the perspective of decades later. Everyone's parents have likely said the same for years and every young person has likely not heard a word of it.

As life moves on, people get established friend groups and have no spare time or energy to expand those groups – there are only so many people you can socialise with. Another time of finding new friends often occurs when people have children – they go to ante-natal groups, have coffee together discussing sleepless nights and whether their children are thriving, share birthday parties. Once again, there's a large element of newness in the mix. An observation I've made as a woman is, if another woman has children and you don't (never had or your children have grown up), no matter how nice an idea it is to be friends with that woman, it rarely works. Children fill up people's lives, particularly women's lives, in a way that leaves little spare room. When your friend has a baby, you think, "I wish you all the best and see you in twenty years."

The friend-group problem in the Wakatipu could also be size of community. The Wakatipu had 30,000 inhabitants in the last census. Your tribe will be a subset of people and, the smaller the pool, the fewer of your tribe there are to find. Not to mention, we live in Gibbston where there are around 200 houses and probably only half of those permanently occupied. Houses are physically separated and most drive around – you don't bump into people in the street and there are few events in Gibbston where you can meet the other locals.

The problem could be dilution by tourism and transient workers. That's something specific to the Wakatipu (there's no other area in New Zealand with as dense a transient population). My friend and I discussed this in particular on Monday. She has been very proactive in trying to meet new people and has been going out to dinner, bars, and events with the deliberate attitude of making herself open to a conversation. (Interestingly, a music blog I subscribe to wrote about the best ways to be accepted by a group you want to join – feel like you will be accepted! If you walk in with the attitude that people are more likely to accept you, that's what happens.) I'm impressed by my friend's approach; she says she's had lots of interesting conversations. However, the majority have been with people who are in the area briefly or, at best, temporarily.

When we moved to Gibbston, the issue of transience hadn't crossed my mind. My previous experience of holiday towns was in Canada and Austria, when I was the transient. Those towns were great friend-making experiences because I was one of the people doing new things in the new place and open to making new friends. It's different when you are on the non-transient side of the equation. Eight out of ten people sitting in the Arrowtown cafe will never return to the cafe so there's no point meeting them if you want long- (or even medium-) term friends. One of the ten people, and likely the wait staff and chef, are only here for a year or two. You can become friends with transients, but you're going in knowing there's no long-term friendship. Some transient friends are great. Only transient friends is not.

One of the writing group women said, "If it doesn't get better soon I'm going to have to leave. Although I don't know where I'll go." Me? I'm in a much better space than I was four years ago because the people I have met through writing and music mean I finally see a few people in cafes, or on the street, or in the supermarket, who I know. And I get to see the same community of people at orchestra, and open mic, and writing group.

There are no easy answers here and I'm not looking for them. I'm documenting what has happened so other women (I haven't yet had the same conversation with a man) can see they aren't alone. Community in adversity! And can some people other than me please reiterate to Christopher Luxon there's no point 'saving' the economy through tourism if the resultant economy isn't one New Zealanders can thrive in, because friendships and a feeling of community are as essential to thriving as money.