Money: the cost of living in New Zealand

February 20, 2013 by 3 Comments

Life in New Zealand is undeniably most pleasant, but the cost of living in New Zealand is high — often quite inexplicably so. I’ve been reminded of this fact once again this week, as I prepare to have a cooker shipped here from the UK. We’re having our kitchen remodeled — it’s part of an extension that was added to our 1920 bungalow in, we believe, the 1960s, and it’s showing its age — and as part of the project, we decided to look at a new cooker. The model we decided we wanted — oh, we really wanted it, when we saw it at Harvey Norman — was a fantastic piece of kitchen technology, but one that, at six and a half thousand dollars, was, well, just a little out of our reach.

When we got home, though, I decided to have a little bit of a shop around on the Internet. I found the very cooker we had been pining for, on offer in various British retail outlets. The price in Britain — about $1,800, or considerably less than one third of the NZ price. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Auckland, Cost of living, Food, Housing, Life in New Zealand Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Slow: trying to get round Auckland

April 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

New Zealand is not a huge country. It’s comparable in size to Great Britain — a manageable, comfortable, country-sized country. Australia, next door, is far bigger than a country needs to be; America, my previous home, is unnecessarily huge. Europe is home to countries smaller than a typical Australian cattle station — Luxembourg is so small it barely shows up on most maps, and the Vatican is smaller than Pukekohe.

Traffic in PukekoheTraffic in Pukekohe!

New Zealand is a pleasingly-sized place. But, given the emptiness of the place, getting around isn’t always the easiest task in the world. Driving in New Zealand can frequently prove to be a frustrating experience. Pukekohe, delightful town that it is, is exceptionally easy to navigate — not a traffic light in the place, with cars kept flowing thanks to roundabouts, wonderful invention that they are, at almost every junction of any note. But try heading north into Auckland, and things change quickly. The imaginatively and creatively named Southern Motorway heads up from Drury to the centre of the city, and for the most part it’s an easy run — easy, but shockingly dull and dreary. Almost as soon as you pass Papakura, you find yourself in the urban sprawl that represents the worst of Aukland. And one you pass the TipTop ice-cream factory and Sylvia Park’s shopping mall, you wonder if maybe heading south to Hamilton might not have been such a bad idea after all. From Greenlane north, traffic routinely slows, often to a full stop. From here you’ll inch along, crawling past Auckland Grammar School and marveling at the site of the new prison that’s being built to overlook the motorway. Despite the monstrous upheavals resulting from massive overhauls to the Newmarket viaduct, and the cut-and-cover of the Victoria Park tunnel, traffic still struggles to flow smoothly as it approaches, along the waterfront motorway (an astonishingly strange use for prime harbourside real estate), the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

The motorway goes south to Hamilton, and Wellington-bound Aucklanders find themselves, south of Hamilton, in the middle of some of the world’s loveliest scenery, and the drive from the country’s main city to its capital winds, twists and wriggles around the natural contours of the land. No motorway — oh, no, the motorway disappears before you even reach Huntly. The roads meander through the countryside, sometimes wide and straight, sometimes narrow, serpentine and circuitous. Hills are steep, curves are sharp. It’s an adventure of a drive, sometimes, and not for all passengers. It might be possible, I’m sure, to build a motorway between the two cities, but I’m very glad nobody has. There isn’t, I don’t believe, enough traffic to warrant a highway, and the landscape would surely be the poorer for a two-lane-each-way scar slashed through it. The Northern Gateway from Albany to Puhoi is an efficient means of bypassing Orewa, but it is a gash in the surface of the land that makes one question whether it is out of propotion with the benefit it offers. Certainly, I question the merits of the “Holiday Highway” that is often suggested, an extension of the Northern Gateway motorway from its current end, at the Johnsons Hill Tunnels south of Puhoi, which would continue the road past Warkworth and, depending on who’s talking, all the way up to Wellsford. But, as with the route south, is there really enough traffic to warrant it?

While the roads between towns in New Zealand are, as a rule, empty, in the cities, traffic can be unbearable; certainly, trying to negotiate the tangle that is Auckland’s motorway junctions is routinely an ordeal capable of adding close to an hour to a journey. So what’s the alternative? Auckland, at least, has a rail service, but this is only a benefit to those of us who live on one of the two lines, one heading south to Pukekohe, the other west to Henderson. But even trains are a half-answer to the problem. Between Britomart and Papakura, the stop before Pukekohe, the service is good. Trains run frequently, and the service is tolerably, if not brilliantly, reliable. But south of Papakura, things are different. Here in Pukekohe, we might see one train, possibly two, an hour, during commuting times. During the day, however, miss a train and you’ll be waiting up to two hours for the next. And don’t even bother looking for a train at the weekend — on Saturdays and Sundays, you’re either driving to the city or leaving your car at Papakura station, where all the services end.

When I go into the city on Thursday for my new technology bit for Radio New Zealand’s Nine To Noon show, I’ll need to be at the studio by 11. The drive should take forty minutes; I’ll allow twice that, just to be sure. I won’t be taking the train; if I catch the half-past-eight train, I’ll be in town an hour and a half early, but if I miss it, I’ll miss my show. New Zealand, as I’ve said repeatedly and I’ll say again now, is a beautiful, lovely country, one I’m delighted to live in. I just really, really wish it were easier to get round.

Filed Under: Auckland, Life in New Zealand, North Island, Pukekohe, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Well and truly Wellington

January 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

I find Wellington to be the most confounding city in New Zealand. Last month I made my fourth visit to the capital, and almost wished, by the end of the day, that I hadn’t.

My very first visit to New Zealand, in 2008, ended with a trip to Wellington, to an interview for a job I didn’t get in Naenae, in Lower Hutt, north of the city. I flew in the day before the interview, and spent a highly enjoyable afternoon exploring Wellington. On this trip I first stayed at the Carillon Motor Inn, the eccentric joys of which I wrote about elsepost, and I found myself most enamoured of the city, if not of the Carillon.

Wellington in the sunshine from the top of the cable car line

Wellington on a good day

This had much to do with the city. On my first visit, the sunshine bathed Wellington. From the Botanical Gardens, at the top of the climb of the cable car, the view of the city, and of the port it hugs, was splendid. Walking Lambton Quay was a joy. The wonderful old buildings of the parliamentary quarter were magnificent. It was a good day.

But then I went back with The Girls, a year or so later, in early spring, and had to wonder if I were in the same city. Where once I had seen beauty framed by blue skies, instead I saw drear and dullness weighed down by the granite and slate of grey, heavy clouds that blanketed the sky and watered us steadily. The view from the hill, well, wasn’t — there might, for all we knew, have been a city in front of us, but we had now way of knowing. Nowhere, I’ll grant you, no city will look its best under such circumstances, but Wellington wears its winters heavy.

A third trip, again alone, again, by coincidence, for a job interview in Naenae (didn’t get that job either), that December again reminded me of the charms of the city. And so, when I heard that drinks were being laid on for the Nine To Noon team at Radio New Zealand’s headquarters on The Terrace, I booked my flight. And, as the day grew nearer, the clouds grew heavier.

I had, between my broadcast bit in the morning and the drink-up in the evening, about five hours to kill, and the weather was truly grim — drizzle if I was lucky, full-on rain if I wasn’t. After wrapping up my on-air bit, I walked back down The Terrace as far as Parliament; I was just in time for the next guided tour. I had taken the tour on my first visit, so I knew it was worth an hour of my time, and, after all, it was under cover — one major plus-point before the guide even said “hello.”

The Beehive, Wellington, in the sunshine

The Beehive, Wellington, in the sunshine

The tour was, of course, excellent. It started in the Beehive (of which more anon), and led through the Parliamentary library and into the House itself; Parliament not being session (this was just a few days after a rather dispiriting general election, and no new government had been officially formed), we were allowed to visit the floor of the House, which surprised, but also rather pleased, me. Photographs weren’t allowed; I did point out that even the Australians allow photos in the the two chambers of their Parliament during tours — telling a Kiwi that the Aussies do it better is almost guaranteed, usually, to get a result — but we had all had to surrender cameras and cellphones before the tour began.

An hour killed, I found myself outside Parliament in the steadily-building rain. I crossed the road to a cafe, and bought a cup of coffee, thinking that if I drank it slowly I could make another hour go away. As I sat at a table waiting for my flat white, I noticed a familiar-looking man walk through the door. After a couple of seconds, I recognized him as Winston Peters, leader of New Zealand First, one of the largest of the minority parties in New Zealand’s parliament. Not being overly impressed with the man, I didn’t bother to go and say hello. But I was surprised at how relaxed senior politicians are about going out in public in New Zealand. This has to be a good thing. Unlike New Zealand First.

But the coffee only lasted so long, and so, the rain having eased off considerably, I started to walk down toward Cuba Street, the funky, edgy end of town. I don’t think I’ve seen any town, any city — this includes, by the way, New York, London, Melbourne, San Francisco, Tokyo, even Auckland — anywhere that has the cafe density of Cuba Street. Every third business, it seems, has an espresso machine hissing away, and if it’s not a cafe, it’s a restaurant, or a grocer’s. Food heaven, indeed. So I stopped for lunch at a Turkish cafe that made the best doner kebab I’ve tasted in as long as I can remember — hot, spicy, oily, lamby, delicious — and then carried on toward Te Papa.

Te Papa Tongarewa calls itself “The Museum of New Zealand,” but that doesn’t quite do the place justice. It’s a huge, expansive collection of everything it means to be Kiwi — whether that means Maori, or Pakeha, or Pasifika, or any other flavor of New Zealander. Everything is represented here, from kaupapa Maori to contemporary Pakeha pop culture. The geology of New Zealand is depicted in charts, diagrammes and a model house that replicates the massive earthquake that shook Edgecombe in 1987. I spent maybe three hours wandering around the place, fascinated. I could easily have spent longer.

Possibly the most amazing thing about Te Papa is the fact that it’s free. It’s a publicly-owned museum, and so the public have free access. This is how it should be. A museum of this calibre could, should it choose, charge a large sum for admission and still hope to see plenty of visitors, but Te Papa, belonging to the people, does not charge the people admission. This is a wonderful place.

The Beehive, Wellington, in the rain

The Beehive, Wellington, in the rain

Less wonderful is the Beehive. Designed in the 1960s, and built in the 1970s, before the world realized precisely how ugly concrete really can be, the Beehive squats like a stumpy dalek, all harsh angles and freaky fins and vast sharp edges of ugly, next to the classical buildings of New Zealand’s Parliament. While it is, undeniably, an iconic symbol of Wellington, it is also testimony to the fact that construction, by and large, really should have been put on hold for much of the period between about 1960 and 1980. It’s not simply that the Beehive is ugly. It almost, but not quite, transcends ugliness, but, sadly, instead of crossing over from “ugly” to “so ugly it’s actually interesting,” it simply remains firmly in “ugly” territory. Not only is it ugly; it’s also horribly out of place. Next to the 1922 Parliament House, a lovely neoclassical construction, and the gothic-revival Library, the grey and dull brown Beehive is simply wrong.

And so the score in Wellington remains a tie — 2-2 between me and the weather. I still have a fondness for the place, and I still want to spend a little more time exploring the city, and the area around it, but more and more I find myself thinking it’s definitely a great place to visit, and a wonderful place to come home from.

Filed Under: Activities, Life in New Zealand, North Island, Travel, Wellington Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

She’ll be right: the New Zealand way

September 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Moving to New Zealand from any country will involve just a little bit of culture shock; even for poms (remarks I’ve made elsewhere notwithstanding), New Zealand is a new country, with its own ways of doing things. But I didn’t come here directly from the UK; eight years living in the US, a surprisingly buttoned-down country, for all its “land of the free” propaganda, left me finding New Zealand a quite refreshingly relaxed place to be, and nothing sums up that relaxed nature better than three words you’ll often hear here.

“She’ll be right.” Most any potential hurdle or hazard you encounter in NZ life will be met with a smile, a shrug and a “she’ll be right.” Instead of endless rules, regulations, restrictions and prohibitions, here in New Zealand people do seem to be willing — quite happy, even — to let events unfold, comfortable and safe in the knowledge that she’ll be right.

Last summer we built a barbecue in the back garden. We went to the local engineering workshop to order some iron bars. They took our measurements, took our order, but didn’t want our money. “Pay us when you pick it up. She’ll be right.” Debbie, ever the American, was at once amazed and delighted that a business would commit time, materials and effort to a job, even a fifty-dollar job, without payment upfront. But no worries, mate, she’ll be right.

As regular readers will be aware, we’ve recently installed solar panels on the roof of our house. We also, as I shall blog about soon (not today; I have talked at far too great length lately about such matters) installed central heating. The total cost for these two systems was comfortably in the five-figure range, not a sum we had lying around, so we spoke to the National Bank about an increase on our mortgage. We supplied the revised property valuation, the contractors’ estimates, and the application form. Next thing we knew, we had a large sum of money deposited in our account. We’ve had the work done, of course, and we’re very happy with it, but nobody from the bank has ever bothered to check that the home improvements that were meant to provide extra value to the property securing the extra loan were actually done. She’ll be right.

I’ve been branching out a little of late; while physics teaching is still highly enjoyable, I’ve been making now-regular appearances on Radio New Zealand‘s Nine To Noon programme as their technology correspondent. I was having dinner with my predecessor, Nat, who let slip that he would be taking some time off from the show. Encouraged, possibly, by the glass of wine in front of me (and, to be fair, its predecessors that evening), I suggested to Nat that I might make a good replacement. “Send me an email in the morning,” he said, “with links to your blogs. I’ll pass it on.” I duly followed his advice, and a week later the show’s producer called me, asking when I could start. No interview, no audition. Nat had recommended me; that was good enough for them. She’ll be right. I’ve done four slots so far, and they keep asking me back for more, so she clearly will be right.

Many more examples spring to mind. There’s the waterfall in Whangarei, tall enough that falling over would spoil, at the very least, your day, and, more likely, your life, but which has no railings, no barriers, nothing to stop visitors from walking out into the stepping stones in the middle of the Hatea river and peering over the edge. There’s Melvin, the B&B owner in Taumaranui who let us leave without paying (we only had a credit card; he didn’t accept them), knowing we’d be back in a day or two and who trusted that we’d bring cash with us then. And so on, and so on.

It would be easy to dismiss this attitude as a little bit slack, or lazy, or even naive. I have no doubt that there are some who exploit it, either to excuse their own idleness and carelessness or to take advantage of others. But if they exist, I have yet to encounter them. It’s good to remember that, living as we do on these small, remote, isolated and lonely islands, a million miles from anywhere in the middle of the South Pacific, the good people of New Zealand look after each other. They trust each other, and they trust that things will work out right.

So far they have. She’ll be right.

Filed Under: Life in New Zealand, Moving to New Zealand Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Finally — something I miss from America!

July 12, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I spoke to my mother on the phone recently — as I do from time to time, thanks to the online wonderfulness that is Skype — and was asked a simple but rather significant question. “What do you miss from Florida?”

Well, apart from my family, I realised, there wasn’t, really, a whole lot I did miss from Florida, or from the US in general. New Zealand, being a modern, first-world country, has pretty much everything I could ask for. Even Warkworth, tiny village that it is, is a well-supplied town, with pubs, chippies, a supermarket, even half a dozen coffee shops serving coffee vastly superior to anything that Starbucks have to offer. And Auckland, less than an hour down the road, is a proper, grown-up city with everything one could realistically ask for in a city. No, I was sure, there was nothing I missed from the US.

But I’ve finally found something that I do miss from America. [Read more...]

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