The marriage subsequently split and Lange kept ownership of the properties before adding Glencoe and Coronet Peak Stations, taking his holding to more than 53,000ha of pastoral land from Glendhu Bay near Wanaka to Coronet Peak near Queenstown.
He later invested heavily in environmentally sympathetic development that removed reliance on livestock farming.
That included spending $1.6 million over three years controlling wilding pines, weeds and pests, planting river margins and fencing waterways and sensitive shrublands.
At the time the Overseas Investment Office approved the Twain sale land over 1100m above sea level was retired to conservation.
The couple went further and opened up 4000ha to the public, agreed to create a tramping track through the property and once a year provide access for a community-run cycle and running race.
In 2014 Lange gave 50,000ha to the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust.
Lange’s lawyer Willy Sussman described the notoriously shy, multi-millionaire, Switzerland-based music producer as unconventional and a far-sighted thinker who wants to make a difference to the world.
“He doesn’t do it for fame, he doesn’t do it for fortune and he doesn’t do it for publicity. He does it because it’s the right thing to do.”
Significantly, the properties provide a bolt-hole where their high-profile owners get guaranteed privacy, something the rich and famous increasingly value and see the South Island high country providing.
United States television host Matt Lauer has similar intentions with Hunter Valley Station on the shores of Lake Hawea while others in the South Island are owned by independently wealthy people seeking privacy and seclusion.
Their deep pockets, willingness to invest vast sums of money and provide community benefits such as access have taken the more desirable properties out of the reach of local buyers.
The Labour-led Government has subsequently tightened rules on foreigners buying land, which has reduced demand, while ending tenure review, where lessees can retire land in return for the right to freehold the balance, has changed the dynamics of the high country.
Tenure review has enabled the freeholding of 346,000ha and most leaseholders have used it to strengthen their farm businesses.
Some farmers have subdivided land while others have added tourist ventures or changed farming practices.
The process has also added 302,000ha to the conservation estate, including the creation of 10 new conservation parks.
In addition, the Nature Heritage Fund has boosted the conservation estate by buying pastoral lessees, including the 79,300ha St James Station in North Canterbury and the 24,000ha Birchwood Station in North Otago.
Federated Farmers high country chairman Simon Williamson said the tenure review policy has been of huge benefit to lessees, subsequent landowners and the rural communities.
Property sales and tenure review settlement have allowed farmers to sell economically poor performing properties and help families move to more viable farms.
For some lessees, freeholding has enabled them to strengthen their business by investing in irrigation, fertiliser, pasture and genetics.
Rabbits and scant vegetation mean extensively farmed areas of the Mackenzie Basin and parts of Waitaki are susceptible to topsoil loss through wind erosion but that has stopped with more secure land tenure allowing the opportunity to invest in the land and protect it from rabbits and improve vegetative cover.
While critics have focused on the introduction of irrigation and dairying in some dryland areas, freehold properties such as Bendigo Station and Northburn Station in Otago have transformed rabbit-prone land into high-value vineyards.
Others now grow cherries or have developed tourist ventures and farm-stay lodges.
Williamson says the role of farmers in managing weeds and pests in the high country has been dismissed but on the 302,000ha now in conservation, that role falls to the Department of Conservation.
And there are other unintended consequences.
The removal of grazing on Birchwood Station is making the habitat less favourable for the rare black stilt, which does not like the rampant vegetation growth previously controlled by grazing.
The loss of grazing is also causing problems with controlling weeds such as wilding pines, previously contained by sheep.
