SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW
By Julie Holton & Harmen Hielkema
Ka riro he au heke, e kore e hoki ki tóna mátápuna anó.
The flowing current moves on and will never again return to its source.
(We will not get a second chance)
Kura-pae a Máhina.
The red ornament of Mahina.
(One man’s rubbish may be another’s treasure)
Are our current lifestyles really achieving our long-term expectations of wellbeing, health, wealth and prosperity?
Lifestyle seems to be a much overused and sometimes misused term, implying much more than it really means and perceived by many to be the indulgence of a privileged middle class rather than a birthright for all. Julie and I are of that age group and educational level where we, as with many of our contemporaries, are seeking to live closer to our personal truth.
As a lecturer in design at the Auckland University of Technology I tended to lace my design teaching with an emphasis on ecological sustainability in the timeless way. As time went by I felt more and more hypocritical of our theoretical approach to teaching and learning, particularly in regard to the way in which we were living from day to day in Auckland City. Eventually a day came when our discontent and inner tension became too strong to ignore.
Health may well be one of our greatest assets. Without a fully functioning immune system, wracked with doubt & anxiety, stress, sleeplessness, chronic pain and illness, low resistance to viral and bacterial infection, life can be difficult and joyless. Long term depression and low-grade performance are a vicious, negative spiral from which it can be difficult to extricate one’s self.
Julie and I were aware of what was happening to us. We had been suffering the effects of chronic illness and the conventional medical prognosis for both of us was very poor. It was this more than anything that decided us on a drastic course of action to change our lives before the opportunity (and our energy) passed us by.
We visualized our new lifestyle and chose our new property using a mixture of logical analysis by way of a long list of criteria (which the property met by over 90 %) and intuition. We responded strongly to our feelings of “rightness” as I maneuvered the curser with growing excitement over the web page featuring our home to be. My arm and right shoulder prickled with goose flesh as we read the land agent’s description, which on reflection feels more as though the house chose us.
Our criteria comprised of a list that Julie & I agreed to compile independently. We merged the two lists and found that we valued similar things. Our criteria included things like:
Our next property had to be fertile, well-drained and north facing, preferably coastal, with a view (or at least near mountains) and/or a river. The property needed to be in an area where we had access to our families and guests without having to fly, preferably within half a day’s drive of Auckland. We wanted an established garden with fruiting trees, a good quality dwelling suitable for our business plan (operating a hosted luxury lodge) and it had to have a workshop. The house needed to be in sound condition with plenty of character. Bonus criteria included open fires x 2 a wetback fire, solar water heating, a bore, roof and river water, an ancient water pump and reticulation system and a generator house plus proximity to broadband connection.
We used all the research tools available to us to find what we were looking for. Internet, real estate catalogues and tips from friends and family. Our year long search lead us to a property in the South Hokianga district of Northland in a small rural Maori community called Waima where we purchased an old kauri and totara villa on 2.25 hectares of rural land with a river boundary. We put our Auckland home on the Market and, after a successful sale we resigned our jobs and moved north.
The winding down of our Auckland existence was quite a wrench with unexpected resistance from surprising quarters, the shock news of our resignation was met with cheers from our colleagues as if we had somehow made a great escape from a concentration camp. They remarked on how brave they thought we were. Our families took some time to adjust to the idea however, they could see that the change was well considered so they trusted our decision to make that change. To be truthful we were suffering from anxiety for all the reasons that people have experienced when they let go of their safety lines and plunge into the unknown.
Packing up our belongings and loading them on a truck takes no time to describe and words simply cannot convey how we felt as we creaked and groaned our way northward in the teeth of a June gale laced with driving rain in our overloaded vehicles. We arrived in the dark and bogged the van on the lawn. My first step onto our new property was into a cowpat, one of many of the infamous free-range and feral animals we were to encounter in Waima.
Julie and I have both come from diverse working backgrounds both finally settling in careers that suited our natures by trial and error, see our website for more of that story www,waima_lodge.co.nz. This random and varied career path had given us skills and insights that have proven very useful in our lives together today. Cues and clues to the story of our journey describing the steps we took to where we are today are scrawled on the pages of several journals full of lists and drawings of things to buy and projects to complete. Writing lists with clear achievable goals and checking them off after completion is both rewarding and essential to our getting this far together.
We had written a detailed business plan relying heavily on the knowledge we gained from learned theory and bitterly bought from our successes and failures in our previous endevours. We sought expert advice from our accountant and bank manager. We thoroughly researched the history and geography of our chosen area and its suitability to our new lives.
The restoration and refurbishment of Waima Lodge took careful planning, patience, skill, hard work and determination to reach this stage. Among the challenges was the modification of the old building to suit a modern way of life. The house had been built to the highest possible standards of design, workmanship and materials and as a result was sound and perfectly suited to its location and the needs of its first owners in 1920. The passage of time and the neglect of subsequent owners had taken its toll. We replaced all the plumbing & wiring, refitted all 4 bathrooms, the kitchen & redecorated the entire interior. We installed insulation in the ceiling and under the floor, redesigned & rebuilt the solar water heating system and redesigned & installed a wood fired wetback radiator, heating system. Most of these were features that were in the house when we bought it though they were under performing or not working at all. An H.R.V. ventilation system provides low cost dehumidified ventilation and has transformed the atmosphere of the house.
We have relied heavily on sourcing recycled materials in order to maintain the integrity & quality of the build and keep costs as low as possible, for this reason we have undertaken most of the work ourselves though we have brought in outside specialist help in the form of electricians, plumbers and painters when the need arose.
During the course of this 3-year project, I have come to realise that the house and garden in its present form at Waima was the result of people whose lifestyle was ideally suited to their needs at the time. It afforded them and their extended family the necessaries of life throughout the great depression and the Second World War. On the site were two large diesel DC generators, a ground water bore, a river fed water source and an efficient roof water collection and reticulation system. The garden was planted extensively in fruiting and nut bearing trees, grapes & passion fruit. They kept chickens for eggs and meat and cultivated a large kitchen garden of vegetables and herbs.
There was abundant wildlife in the surrounding area including fish, fowl, hares, rabbits, pigs & goats. There was some reliance on trade, goods and services from the local town of Kaikohe, which at first, was met with the use of a horse and buggy and later replaced with a motorcar. No provision was ever made on site for a crossing or facility for a car in the form of driveway or garage, which says something of their attitude and relationship to the car! We benefit from the foresight of Maurice and Sarah Kelly and pay them the respect they deserve by collecting, recording and telling their story, which is a very important one in the history of the Hokianga.
Over the past 3 years we have partially tamed an enormous Capability Brown style garden, re-established the vegetable gardens, we have a flock of chickens, we preserve spray-free orchard produce and Waima Lodge (now the home of Harmen and Julie) is up to a standard that Maurice and Sarah would be proud and pleased to see, right down to the original colour scheme. Coincidently Maurice was the same age as I am now (50 years) when he completed the Waima house project in 1920. As a result of our hard work, clean water, air & organic home grown produce, our health has been restored to a very high level, which allows us to feel and fully appreciate the quality of life that we knew we were entitled to.
We have replaced our petrol line trimmer with a scythe, a tool that is more efficient than its modern counterpart and is proving to be better for our selves and the environment in which we live. We use our car as little as possible and carefully plan outings to coincide with as many errands as we can fit into a day. Further initiatives relating to the creation of our own energy and further refining our systems continue as time and money allow.
We over ran our budget for this project by a factor of 10 with unforeseen expenses and problems with electrics and plumbing. Also our expectations and fortunes have changed with the ups and downs of the local and global economy with the consequential slowdown in the tourism industry. We have adapted by continuing to search for alternative sources of income including hosting special dinners for the local community, art, music (we both play music for our guests and neighbours) and other creative projects, which continue to grow apace.
On a positive note we now have the opportunity to share our lifestyle with our local and international guests for our mutual benefits. Where pale exhausted visitors arrive they leave us revitalised from their stay with us, enthused that they too can choose to make the changes necessary to their lives. Several of our friends and colleagues were inspired by our move and made similar changes themselves. Perhaps change only occurs once we have made the decision to apply what we (and our ancestors) have learned over many lifetimes to our attitudes, behaviour & actions.
Whilst after three and a half years we still cannot say with any certainty that our activities will sustain us in the long term we continue to strive to that end. Would we recommend that others do what we have done? Of course, yes! Only be sure that you do this for the right reasons for you. Choose carefully, you may just get what you really want.
"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust.
It has been slowly dawning on me that the story of the Kelly family and their way of life in Waima is a blueprint for our own lives, a step back… to the future.
(For more of the Kelly story go to; http://waimalodgekellys.blogspot.com/)
Harmen Hielkema
Harmen Hielkema and Julie Holton on the sun porch at Waima 2009
Editor’s Note:
The extraordinary growth of “Lifestyle Blocks” over the last decade has spawned a supporting system of magazines and books extolling a kiwi version of The Good Life. In that time more than 60,000 lifestyle blocks have been developed, mostly around the urban fringes with many of their budding Richard Briers and Felicity Kendals seeking a more sustainable life, free from the stresses of the corporate world.
The 1975 British sitcom followed on from the (first) 1974 oil crisis, and marked a kind of watershed for many viewers reaching their midlife and concerned for the first time about living “outside the system”. In their home in Surbiton, Tom and Barbara Good pursue a sustainable life, digging up their front and back gardens and turning them into allotments, growing and bottling their own fruit and vegetables, raising chickens, a goat and a rooster. They generated their own electricity, using methane from animal waste, and they even attempted to make their own clothes. They also worked at selling or bartering surplus crops for essentials which they could not make themselves as they tried to cut their monetary requirements to the minimum with varying success.
Part of the reason for the show’s success lay in the fact that even then, significant numbers of the viewing audience could see the sense and need to reduce consumption and to conserve fragile and finite resources, to live more holistically. That awareness is now even more widespread and has partly fuelled the dramatic shift to the country. Here, Julie Holton and Harmen Hielkema share their own experiences of that shift from an inner city professional life to an old totara and kauri villa on two and a quarter hectares with a dream of turning it into the sustainable B&B now known as Waima Lodge..
Tony Ward
"Organic Explorer"
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