Why I Love New Zealand: 10 Reasons

Here, in no particular order are 10 reasons why I love New Zealand:

Beautiful Milford Sound

1. Gorgeous scenery.  The landscape is magnificent and extremely varied. Mountains, hills, grasslands, ocean -- New Zealand has it all.  (It's as if everyone in Canada got to live in Vancouver.)  And, there is added value in exotic extras like volcanoes and bubbling mud!

2. Size matters.  It is a small country, about the size of Great Britain, so nothing is very far away.  That explains all those rented camper vans on the roads!  At the same time, New Zealand seems spacious because the population (4.5 million) is less than that of the Greater Toronto Area.

Wellington hillside neighbourhood

3. Hilltop homes. I love all the cities on hills with  houses perched to take advantage of wonderful views.  Every street is a surprise and every house is unique!

Love those flat whites!

4. Coffee culture.  Coffee is a serious business in New Zealand!  You place your order for coffee (a skinny flat white, perhaps) and wait while it is produced, like a work of art.  And no coffee is complete without a treat.  Try a ginger or lemon slice.

5. Air. I am aware of an exotic scent the moment I get off the plane  Is it the sea, the eucalyptus trees, the manuka (a scrubby tree with tiny flowers beloved of bees)?   New Zealand smells like a Pacific island.

Gum tree in bloom

6. Native bush.  Walk in the New Zealand bush (i.e. woods), and it is immediately obvious that the foliage is different - semi-tropical and intensely green all year round.  Depending on the time of year, ferns and palms abound, and trees burst with gaudy flowers.

Seal lion at Sandfly Beach

7. Wildlife.  Thanks to efforts to eliminate introduced predators, native birds are much more common.   And because there are no native mammals, hikers will never encounter a bear or cougar on a  trail, although they might meet a sea lion on the beach.

8. Maori. The Maori presence is everywhere -- in sport, schools, on TV and government signage. Place names are often in Maori/English.  Example:  Aoraki/Mt. Cook.

"The window on the wide world'

9. Active lifestyle.  New Zealanders seem to live outdoors all year round.  Even a former prime minister, Helen Clark, is a mountain climber.  Wind and rain?  Floods and earthquakes?  No problem for hardy Kiwis.  Read what journalist Juliet Larkin (daughter of friends John and Anne Smith) has to say about hiking the Dusky Track.

10. Restrained materialism.  Island life far away in the South Pacific means that Kiwis are still unable to purchase every little thing that is available in North America. There is no Ikea. No Target. No Ben and Jerry's. It makes for a somewhat simpler lifestyle where the occasional luxury really is special.

One More!  It's the important one. 

11. Kiwis.  New Zealanders are fabulous -- friendly, kind, witty, and down to earth.  Even people who have never visited New Zealand seem to know this, but we know it for sure because our friends embody these qualities in spades. They are all such fun to visit and so generous.  "What? The airport is closed because of fog? Come on back and stay with us as long as you want....!"  And we did.

Bless them.

And now, for me, it's back to the business of being retired:  Retirement is Work 

Auckland

We gave ourselves exactly 2 half-days in Auckland -- enough time to visit with Coral, Margaret's cousin, and have lunch the next day with our friend George.

Coral's yard.  The flat area was once a tennis court.

I had never visited the Stanley Bay area of Devonport, a harbourside suburb in Auckland, so I was delighted to stay with Coral in her Stanley Point villa.

Coral's house on Stanley Point

Her property looks across to the Auckland Harbour Bridge and goes down the hill to the water and a private beach.

On Coral's veranda

Auckland Harbour Bridge from the veranda.

A rather lovely old villa with fenced yard.

A more modest bungalow..

This is a lovely part of  Auckland with beautiful older homes
dating from the early 1900's.  They are primarily wooden with verandas and lots of intricate scroll work. I couldn't resist a few pictures.

Hedged, gated property

The next day, we saw George in his new apartment, and were seated around the headmaster's desk that dominates his main room while he quizzed me over the top of his glasses about the "vagueness" of my Christmas letter.  I felt a great impulse to  promise that I would "do better next time, Dr. Marshall".  He is a sweet man with a great sense of humour so there is the possibility that  he was not completely serious!     

We had a very elegant lunch at the Cornwall Park Restaurant in the One Tree Hill Domain. Jim and Margaret recall having had tea here when they were first dating and the restaurant was simply known as "The Kiosk" .

George, Bruce and Nancy

George, Margaret and Jim

Road Trip: Wellington to Auckland

Brown Sugar Cafe at Otaki

Back in Wellington, we prepared for our road trip with  friends Jim and Margaret.  Our purpose, aside from having a good time together, was to visit a mutual friend, George Marshall, who at 87 now lives in an Auckland retirement home.

The trip was not really about scenery or visits to tourist destinations along the way.  We simply didn't have the time although if we were stopped for some reason, and the light was right, I was not above memorializing the moment.

Sign in cafe washroom ....makes you think.

Afternoon tea break with alpacas and lambs.

It is a long day's drive to Auckland from Wellington, so we chose to break the journey in Ohakune, a ski resort near Mt. Ruapehu, one of three occasionally active volcanoes in the middle of the North Island.  One of Margaret's cousins owns a holiday home here.


Strangely, with all the other attractions that might have provided inspiration for a bit of statuary in Ohakune, the good folk of this town chose to erect a monument to the carrot.  I can now claim to have slept in the carrot capital of NZ.  While there, I looked for fields of carrots, market gardens, even local carrots in the New World grocery store, and could find no proof that Ohakune deserves this recognition, but there is online acknowledgement -- check it out: Ohakune.

So strange...a giant carrot.

After that, we headed up through the King Country towards Hamilton, passing through Otorohanga where there is a kiwi house-- a nocturnal aviary where one can watch these ultra shy birds. 

On the way to Otorohanga in the King Country --- rural and very scenic.

Collingwood, Takaka, Nelson

There are so few residents in Collingwood that the Ballards know everyone, and that is one of the pleasures of living in a small, isolated community.  The people who live here -- artists, retirees, craftsmen, historians--are very friendly and look out for one another.

Everyone in town looks in on the widow who lives in this interesting new house.

Bluebird Cottage, our Collingwood abode because Tigger Ballard gave Bruce asthma.

Takaka, 30 minutes down a twisting highway, is the nearest town of any size and where Keith and Pat buy groceries, go to the library, or volunteer at the museum.

Pat, Golden Bay Museum volunteer

Bruce heads towards the Takaka Public Library

Two hours from Collingwood, the big smoke of Nelson has doctors, theatres, galleries and an airport.

A random passenger provides scale for this 11 passenger Cessna, our Sounds Air plane to Wellington

Collingwood

On the tip top of the South Island's north-west coast is the area known as Golden Bay and the town of Collingwood, home to summer people and to folks like our friends Keith and Pat Ballard.  They are from Dunedin, but they love living in the sunny north and decided to build a second home there!

We drove to their corner of New Zealand, renting a car in Christchurch and following the twisting roads through mountainous countryside. The scenery would have been fabulous but it was obscured by mist and rain. Foiled again by weather!  We would have to wait another day for sunshine.

Lucky Ballards!  Who wouldn't want a house with this view, especially if the tide were in...

Pat, Keith and Nancy on a Collingwood walk to the old cemetery

We'll start hiking when the cows (about 100 of them) come home.

Keith and Pat were happy to show us some of the exceptional hiking trails.  Two hours on the Kaituna track took us past the remains of gold fields.

The Kaituna track crosses the river where prospectors sluiced for gold.

Collingwood is very close to Farewell Spit, and although we didn't have time for a trip to the top there is a pretty walk near Cape Farewell along the Wharariki Beach.

Wharariki beach is often windy.

Same walk after a coffee break.  That's a whale skeleton behind us.

Christchurch: Life Goes On, and Sometimes It's Better

Bamboozle:  Asian fusion at its best

Here we are with Fran and Brian at the brilliantly named Bamboozle restaurant, the one that has had three different locations in the past year because of successive earthquakes.

While enjoying our meal, Fran talked about the concept of  post traumatic growth.  (As a psychologist, she is something of an expert on the topic, and was to speak at an upcoming conference, "Seismics in the City".)

The bright side of trauma?   Those who survive catastrophic events may find that their connections to community, family and friends are greatly enhanced, that their spiritual lives become more meaningful, and that they are empowered, as never before, to embrace change with calm confidence.    What else can go wrong?

Bamboozle seems to have heard the message loud and clear.

Christchurch: Signs of Life

New Zealanders are nothing if not resourceful, and they have coped fairly well with this national emergency -- all things considered.

After a year, however, Christchurch is getting tired of being Earthquake City.

Hope grows in a toppled wall.

At the Ellerslie Flower Show held in North Hagley Park, March 7 to 11, the Garden City embraced its horticultural heritage with displays that often seemed to have been inspired by the events of the last year. The results were surprisingly optimistic.  As an outsider, I didn't immediately see the symbolism in rubble mingled with moss and flowers, but when I did make the connection I saw it everywhere.

Christchurch: Sure to Rise

I particularly liked the little flower bed designed by the Edmond's Baking Powder company. Their iconic "sure to rise" sunburst label takes on new significance when the "sun" is a pile of reclaimed red bricks.

Re:START on Cashel Street

Nancy and Brian, ready to shop!

An eco-mall born of necessity

In the downtown core, pop-up shops in shipping containers have infused that area with new life.  These improvised stores look amazing with show-case windows, trendy signage, and simple-yet- effective landscaping.

This container mall is known as Re: START; its logo is a heart comprised of multi-coloured rectangles (the stacked and painted containers).

This coffee shop has a special Re: START blend

Christchurch: The Human Cost

It is worth noting that not just infrastructure and architecture have been shattered by the seismic events of the past year.  People's lives have been turned upside down in so many ways:  

• Houses were destroyed by the quake and people were forced to find new accommodation
• Families living in "intact" dwellings were without power, water, sewers....
• Many school and university buildings were closed for several months forcing students into new locations, even private homes
• Businesses were destroyed, or forced to close down while damage was assessed.  Employees lost jobs.
• Many public institutions (art galleries, museums, public libraries, theatres)  have had to suspend or curtail operations.  
• Those people whose lives are relatively OK say that Christchurch is no longer a fun place to live.  If they can, they move away.  Our friend Fran observed that the city now has plenty of  "parking lots " but no reasons to use them.  The "destinations" have been destroyed.

I cannot imagine living with so much stress on a daily basis, still not knowing if the worst is yet to come. In this year of earthquakes, the residents of Christchurch have experienced over 1000 aftershocks. 

The Sumner Library:  closed.   A few other branch libraries provide service. 

Christchurch: Shaking City

We were in Christchurch to visit with our friends Brian and Fran, but we couldn't help being interested in the current state of this beautiful city (pop. 350,000) with its elegant old buildings, gardens and parks.  When we arrived, it had been slightly over a year since the last big quake and the papers were still full of stories.

Brian and Fran were lucky.  Their wooden house had sustained only $150,000 damage in the two major quakes.  The chimney collapsed (along with brick chimneys all over the city), the floor had buckled and the house is no longer sitting level on its foundation, but it is livable.  They know that the land under their property did not turn to liquid during the quakes, so restoration will not be so problematic and will happen more quickly. Their private insurance will fund the job, with help from government earthquake insurance.

Brick walls crumble....news photo

o)

A retaining wall of containers.

Other families have not been so fortunate.  Whole neighbourhoods (up to 10,000 houses) have been abandoned because the homes are damaged and on land that will never provide a secure building foundation.

 On our way to a restaurant that is in its third location because two earlier sites were destroyed, we passed abandoned, darkened communities of expensive cliff-side homes.  These houses are shattered, empty, and most of them cannot be restored. The hillsides on which they stand are shored up with retaining walls built of shipping containers piled one on top of the other.

The full impact of the September 2010 and February 2011 quakes is most clearly seen in the downtown. The sky bristles with cranes which are part of a careful de-construction of buildings that have been identified as uninhabitable. One thousand buildings have been destroyed so far and another 800 are marked for demolition. (This number increases with every aftershock, as borderline buildings develop more severe problems and must be red-stickered.)

Dismantling a parking garage piece by piece

Cranes at work

A new building comes down.

The famous cathedral -- to be demolished.

Occasionally one sees scaffold around a building.  This is a good sign indicating that renovation is underway.

This church made the cut.