Ever since I can remember...
The story of our bach in New Zealand.
Ever since I can remember…
We’ve been going to “The Block”.
A 10 hectare patch of land, mostly covered in tangled and knotted native New Zealand bush. If you don’t know what 10 hectares is, I don’t blame you, I didn’t either when my Dad gave me that answer. Google tells me it’s about the equivalent to 24 football fields.
Having moved house and schools four times as a child, and countries twice, it has remained the most consistent home I’ve ever had.
My parents bought this forestry block within a year or two of getting married and before having any of their 3 children. It’s about an hour and a half drive north of Wellington, New Zealand, and is nestled amongst rolling green hills, hay barrel dotted paddocks and freshwater rivers. Every couple of months when I was growing up, me and my brothers would be bundled into the car. We’d take the winding path over the Rimutaka Hills, usually arriving late and sleepy on a Friday night.
Out of phone service, running on rain water, and with no electricity until the recent addition of solar, we’d spend the weekends totally off grid. Cooking over the fire, toasting marshmallows, making bows and arrows, playing board games, reading books and taking lazy mid-afternoon naps.
There was one hut where we all slept in the same room; my parents, my two brothers and me. My Dad would make up hilarious bedtime stories and tell them aloud as we lay in the dark. Every night we’d beg him to elaborate on the bizarre characters he’d invented.
Having just spent 4 days at The Block over Christmas and introducing it to my partner, I’ve felt particularly reflective about this special place.
With my family now spread across different countries, it remains the most central and consistent place for us all. It is so uniquely ours. On Boxing Day morning my Dad woke up and decided to build a standalone platform next to The Hut as a surface for tents when an overflow of visitors meant we needed to camp. It brought me so much joy to watch my Dad and brothers working away on this project over the next few days.
This place holds the big and the small things. The big things like my Grandparent’s ashes which are laid by the stream, my Mum’s wedding dress which lives boxed up in the shed up on the hill, along with the letters my parents sent each other when they first started dating long distance, and which I discovered one day as a bored 16-year-old.
The little things like the first time I was ever stung by a bee, the second hand outdoor bathtub my brother bought one day, and the incredible fruit and veg that my parents have grown. Avocado trees, limes, peaches, plums, beans, pumpkin, potatoes, lettuce, spring onion, tomatoes —
This Christmas felt particularly special bringing the first new addition to the third generation of our immediate family (my brother’s perfect new baby, Bronte). I felt the sting of time passing in that I was no longer the child growing up here, but instead the adult facilitating it. The more overwhelming feeling, though, was lucky.
That our family have this place to bring us all together, that I can turn my phone on airplane mode for days at a time, that I can enjoy an outdoor bath while sipping a beer that’s been cooled off in the stream and that this place is wholly ours.
Here’s to many more years at The Block.
This is so beautiful to read Bridget!