Photos & more from GBI Happy to share more tidbits about GBI and our life here! As you would expect, it’s Auckland weather here! That means laundry out, laundry in, laundry back out, back in and then finally draped over chairs! Our house is like a theatre, and the sky with its moving clouds is the film. Not too many clouds, we hope, because we need the sun beaming in to keep us nice and warm! We got our phone and internet at last. The installation took nearly four hours and it became an interesting four-hour visit with the contractor, who lives around the corner from where we first were in Okupu. We learned that back in the days before good roads on the mainland, people lived here because transport was easier! Now, aside from people who have boat access only to their properties, there’s very little transport by sea. Some entire houses, also the Medlands Church, have been brought here by barge whole or in parts and set up on their new sites. Our Golden Bay friends Dennis and Cathy lived on Great Barrier for about 13 years until they came to Golden Bay in the early 2000s. Everyone we met who was there when they were remembers them fondly! A friend of ours from the States asked for a comparison of Golden Bay and Great Barrier Island. I jumped into the task and came up with this: * GB was remote, but GBI is even more remote because you can’t get here unless a pilot or ship captain brings you here, or you have your own boat or plane! * GB was sparsely populated, less than 5000, but GBI is even more sparsely populated, somewhere between 700 and 900 people (estimates vary!) year round! * There aren’t any traffic lights in GB, but on GBI there aren’t any speed limit signs either! 35 km per hour is the recommended speed on most roads. Give way and stop signs are few and far between on GBI. Both have their share of unsealed roads. * With no power, there are no streetlights on GBI, and with only about 450 dwellings occupied year round over this large area there’s virtually no light interfering with the night sky. You can imagine it's also blissfully quiet – day and night, though small planes come and go from the aerodrome at Claris. And no chemtrails, whereas the Golden Bay sky was riddled with them. * GB was beautiful, but GBI is even more spectacularly beautiful with grander landscapes and seascapes, a whole lot less people and vehicles, and much, much more bush. Both have been severely impacted by humans – both have had logging and burn off for pastoral farming, though unlike GB, much of GBI is now regenerating. About two-thirds of GBI is conservation land that can’t be developed – including bush, wetlands, dunes and sand flats, coastal cliffs and significant, spectacular ridgelines. * Both have a lot of holiday homes that are only occupied during the summer, and both have become expensive havens with high-priced properties. * GB was mainly conventional for power, but GBI is completely off grid, and everyone has their own systems for electricity and heat. We find it exciting and freeing, and it means no “smart meters”! But there are cell towers in both – they’re everywhere (vodafone alone has 97+% of the country covered). On GBI everyone powers their lights and electric appliances (small ones and not many; no hair dryers here!) with solar (not much wind power used) and sometimes with backup generators; cooks with gas and/or wood; heats with gas, wood or nothing; uses a gas or electric fridge and freezer; and gets their water from rainwater (mainly), bores and/or streams. * For us a difference not in GBI’s favor, one that's dear to our hearts, is access to fresh, organic food, which we try our best to stick with. It’s not easy to grow fruit or veges anywhere, and GBI has its share of impediments. It’s often windy, there are rabbits, rats and kaka (big birds that go after food crops including fruit, even lemons), and the soil is poor in many places. Other than the Okiwi Passion box scheme, which is our salvation, run by the hard work of two people and their WWOOFers, and the shop in Tryphena that has some organic produce brought in, the community gardens where we get our greens, and a small garden at our house, which we’re adding to, and knowing people with surplus happy to share it, there’s just about no other fruit or vege to be gotten, organic or otherwise. People get grocery boxes flown over from supermarkets in Auckland! There’s no organic shop, but we can get some organic dry goods at the shop in Tryphena and bulk organic dry goods from Ceres monthly through the wonderful North Barrier Coop. * GBI is further north (about 600 km north of Golden Bay) and warmer, considered subtropical, and GB was temperate, though as a speck of land in the middle of the ocean, GBI can have rough patches of weather and a lot of wind. After all, it got its name because it’s a barrier to storms coming toward the mainland from the east. * The water for swimming is a whole lot clearer around GBI than GB, and warmer too, and it can be dangerous at times in a few places, with unexpected rip tides and currents. Someone told us not to worry, though – if you get carried out, you’ll just travel in a nice wide curve and be brought back in! Oh, great! The ocean beach side has surfing hot spots – Kaitoke, Awana and Whangapoua – and all of it can be surfed when the sea is up. * GB was unusual for its wonderful community spirit, with many groups, events, and projects that brought people together for enjoyment or another purpose or both. So far we haven’t seen nearly as much of that on GBI — Rural Women, the art gallery, a crafts group. There are no doubt at least a few more. GB’s community spirit included supporting people – more than anywhere I’ve seen or heard of. People said they felt like they were part of a community that knew them and took an interest in them. In both places it seems there’s a bit of tension between “greenies” (that horrid derogatory name for people who are informed and concerned about the environment and health) and those who just want to carry on regardless. * As for the people themselves, in GB we had wonderful circles of close friends, less-close friends, and friendly acquaintances. Those connections were very easy to make. We don’t have a grip yet on what the people on GBI are like, and we haven’t experienced that easy “instant friendship” that’s so natural in Golden Bay, a sense that we should all know each other and what’s happening with each other. That may be a bit of a glorification of reality, but it was my experience. Both places are pretty casual in dress and hair, though there are some in both who keep to a more formal standard. * The economy of the two places is similar — a big reliance on tourism, which is starkly seasonal on GBI (six weeks – mostly from after Boxing Day to not very far into January – a year plus less at the other school holidays), people struggling to get by because of a lack of jobs and high cost of living. Things cost a bit more in GB because of the distance, but not as much as GBI, where everything has to be flown over or sent by boat. * There are no banks or ATMs here, but, alas, no community currency either. There used to be back in the 1970s and 80s when the population was three times what it is now and the demographic very different, with many more “back to the landers”. * There were lots of hairdressers in GB, only two on GBI, and lots of alternative therapists in GB, but only two on GBI! There’s a full-time dentist in GB; he’s here for a few days once a month on GBI [now changed to year-‘round except for June and July]. No hospital at all on GBI; if you need one you get flown out. You can do your driving test and renew your license here, twice a year, I think. No one makes sourdough bread or cheese for sale!! * The darker side of both places – perhaps all places – is alcoholism and other related social problems. "The Barrier Effect”. We hear about it all the time and we’ve experienced it ourselves. It’s when you can’t get the bit you need to keep going with a project or a power system, or some other help you need, or the weather stays bad and flights can’t arrive or depart and the ferry can’t run. The ferry from Auckland runs five times a week in summer and four times a week the rest of the year. That’s what the schedule says, but there’s been no ferry for two weeks! The boat that’s usually used is being serviced this month, so Sealink brought in one of its Waiheke ferries. The Waiheke boat usually has a much shorter distance to travel and now we all have learned it can’t travel four and a half hours in conditions that the larger ferry can handle. Can you imagine being on the mainland with your car and expecting to return home to GBI, or being here with a trip planned over there, and it’s postponed day after day for several weeks! It also means no fresh or chilled food in the shops and no expected supplies arriving. People seem to take it in stride, saying “That’s island life” and "You get creative”! A book in the library at Claris caught Ro’s eye a while back: Straw Bale Gardens. The idea seemed perfect for our situation. We learned of a guy selling straw bales about two minutes away from us, though they’re made from wetland reeds not grain stalks. We got two and Ro started the 12-18 day “conditioning” process to get them all nutritious and warm inside and beginning to decompose. Meanwhile I planted seeds we brought into trays. The bales will be ready for transplants in a week or so. We’ll let you know how it goes! You can find out more at strawbalegardens.com. Ro also got some regular container gardens ready, and we’re using the owner’s small vege garden spaces, and we’ll be sprouting and growing microgreens too. A couple of weekends ago a group organised “Off the Grid”, a weekend of events about alternative energy. Jeanette Fitzsimons was the first of five speakers on Saturday night. The others were experts in particular technologies who presented fascinating, exciting info on the latest developments in solar heating and hot water, electric vehicles and household wastewater treatment. The “field day” had displays and info including the Leaf all-electric car and the papercrete project. There was also a tour of notable off-the-grid systems in homes and businesses around the island. We're keeping a spreadsheet to record the names of everyone we meet enough to get each other’s names. We’re up to 60 — only 600 or 700 more to go! Here are some more photos of the island. There’s a wee saddle over “Sugarloaf” from Kaitoke to Medlands. This is Medlands Beach from an overlook on the way up. Kaitoke wetlands. The mountain in the haze in the background to the right is Te Ahumata, once a volcano. There’s a track to the top and a road along its lower flanks that takes you to Okupu (where we stayed for five weeks) and then down to Blind Bay. Because of the obsidian in the rock, Te Ahumata is called White Cliffs, but you can’t see the cliffs in this afternoon photo. Oceanview Road. This is the whole road; we’re two houses down from the green roof on the right, then just three more houses to the dunes and the sea. "Kaitoke Beach House”, our home through November and perhaps longer. Joanna's "office" View from the foot of the dunes at Medlands Beach If you zoom in, you can find the places I’ve mentioned, starting from the bottom left at Tryphena, then up towards the right to Medlands and Kaitoke on the east side, then back over to the left, to Blind Bay on the west side. Okiwi, where the Okiwi Passion produce is grown, is another third of the island north of Blind Bay. That’s as far north as we’ve been so far. You can see all the tracks in the middle, where the highest mountains are.
Some facts about Great Barrier Island. • 19 km north of Coromandel Peninsula • About 90 km northeast of Auckland • 40 km long, 16 km wide, 258 square km in area • Aotea is its Maori name • 4th largest island in New Zealand (after Stewart Island) • Population currently just below 900 residents • Average temperature 3 degrees warmer than Auckland • Largely frost-free • 60% of property owned by off-shore owners • 70% of island owned or controlled by DOC • 1430 private properties • Two airlines each with several 30-minute flights per day • Regular passenger/car/freight ferry from Auckland - 4 1/2 hour trip • Home to 75 rare and endangered indigenous species • 1/4 of all native plants of NZ grow on GBI including 48 species of native orchids • No possums, stoats, weasels, Norwegian rats or hedgehogs • No reticulated mains power, each household generates its own power by a combination of wind/solar/generator/inverter/batteries • First commercial beekeeping operation in NZ in early 1900s, now several beekeepers produce manuka honey • Scene of gold, silver and copper mining • Extensive kauri forests logged from early 1800s and now regenerating • Primary schooling available for island children, and correspondence or subsidised boarding for secondary students • Famed for fishing and diving with extremely clear water, boating mecca • Internationally known surf beaches - Medlands, Kaitoke, Awana and Whangapoua • More than 100 km of DOC walking tracks
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