Mark Brown on the estuary at Blueskin Bay, with Rabbit Island Travel behind him and Porteous Hill and the tip of Warrington beyond. OUT OF THE BLUE MANY A WORSE PLACE MIGHT BE FOUND IN THE WORLD THAN BLUESKIN BAY, WROTE A TRAVELLER TO COASTAL OTAGO IN 1868. AS JOANNA WANE DISCOVERS, THIS WAS MEANT AS HIGH PRAISE INDEED. JOANNA WANE IS NORTH & SOUTH’S DEPUTY EDITOR. PHOTOGRAPHY BY ISABELLA HARREX. 106 | NORTH & SOUTH | APRIL 2016 NORTH & SOUTH | APRIL 2016 | 107 he bar-tailed godwit flies 12,000km from T Siberia every year to summer at Blueskin Bay. Born over the hill in Port Chalmers, Mark Brown didn’t have quite so far to travel. But when he and his wife, Clare, settled here 40 years ago, their nesting instincts seemed just as irrational. Locals warned they’d go bankrupt after the couple bought five acres on the flat where there’d been a Chinese market garden, down by the river. It cost $9200 and no one had ever paid that much for land in Waitati before. Brown did a bit of gardening work, but it was Clare who brought in the money, as a chemist at the Cadbury factory in Dunedin down the coast. When they applied for a mortgage, the banks wouldn’t take her salary into account; in those days, women were considered an unreliable investment because they might decide to go off and have children. They got the loan, anyway. Tucked into the southern scoop of the Blueskin Bay estuary, Waitati was a mini San Francisco back in the 1970s “and in scale, just as dynamic”, according to stories told of the time. Alternative lifestylers bought up cheap cribs, looking for soul food Landscape architect Sally Brown, whose parents opened Blueskin Nurseries The Big Blue: Looking north from Blueskin Rd, and an escape from the cloistered in the 1980s, with the restored St Brigid’s Church behind her. with Rabbit Island in the mid-foreground. conservatism of Dunedin, only 20km away. The first issues of Mushroom magazine were put together on someone’s kitchen table, stuffed just off the main highway, later streams of sunlight dance through years, he’s seen large family farms An easy commute to the city, the full of articles on self-sufficiency adding a cafe. Daughter Sally, who’s stained-glass windows that were broken up into lifestyle blocks; the community is still catnip to what and organic gardening. A food a landscape architect, moved back designed by Ralph Hotere. The post office, the general store and might be described as the educated co-op set up shop on the road to from London a few years ago and Browns have installed solar panels on the railways have closed. Orokonui eco warrior, among them Green Party Doctors Point, and anti-Vietnam War joined the family business. In 2014, the roof which generate 60 per cent Hospital, one of the district’s main co-leader Metiria Turei. Her stone protests led to the foundation of the she won the People’s Choice award of the power used by the nurseries employers, shut its doors in 1984, and corrugated-iron home, known pacifist Waitati Militia – a raucous at the Ellerslie Flower Show with and cafe. Ponds are being dug to followed a few years later by Cherry as The Castle, was the site of one of lot who still stage uproarious a garden called “Passion”, created recycle water, and an edible garden Farm, which had been built to the Waitati Militia’s most celebrated mock battles in the township. from more than 100 varieties of pink is also on the drawing board, with replace the asylum at Seacliff, a few battles, against the armed wing of No wonder people mistook Brown plants. Home now is a converted the church as a possible venue for kilometres further up the coast. the McGillicuddy Serious Party. for a hippy back then with his long, tramcar, a couple of houses down holding public workshops. And what At Waitati School, the roll Chris Baillie, who manages the bushy beard, now brambled grey. the road from where her parents better place to worship nature? collapsed before slowly rebuilding 300ha predator-free Orokonui “When you told people you were live with Sally’s younger brother, to a healthy base – celebrating Ecosanctuary in the hills above from Waitati, they thought we all Hugh, who has Down syndrome. ike Blueskin Bay itself – its 150th anniversary a couple Waitati, has a zoology degree and walked around with no clothes She’s full of ideas, says her father, named by Pakeha settlers of years ago as Dunedin families lives in a straw-bale house off the on and smoked dope,” he laughs. rolling his eyes, but no prizes for L after a local Ngai Tahu rediscovered the jewel on their grid. “Half the town are university “Some of those old hippies have guessing where that comes from. chief covered in traditional tattoos doorstep. Rural schools are a lecturers,” one long-time resident grown up into real capitalists now.” The pair’s latest project has been – Brown has weathered times of good social barometer and by that tells me. Census data does show a The Browns began small with restoring St Brigid’s, a wee wooden change. “When I first came, there measure Blueskin Bay seems in higher percentage of income earners One of Waitati’s teapot letterboxes – a stall at the gate: asparagus, church on the edge of the nursery. were older people who’d lived rude health – although locals get a than the national average at both a local tradition. silverbeet, courgettes. By 1988, Built in 1895, it was owned by a here all their lives and never been bit toey if there are more than 20 ends of the spectrum, with fewer in they’d opened Blueskin Nurseries group of artists for a while and anywhere else,” he says. Over the people on the beach over Christmas. between (and some of those on low 108 | NORTH & SOUTH | APRIL 2016 NORTH & SOUTH | APRIL 2016 | 109 Above: Louise Burnside, owner of the Gallery on Blueskin. Left: Blueskin Bay Honey’s David Milne, who runs beehive tours. Below left: Roadside Attraction’s Hilary Rowley and Alex Wilson with their industrial 1950s circular knitting machine, which has 350 needles. incomes eschew materialism and in a changing world and the status live on little by choice). “Guerrilla quo cannot continue,” says Willis. “We Above: Roadside Attraction, where designers Hilary Rowley and Alex Wilson orchards” have been planted on can’t sit here twiddling our thumbs – “old punks, not old hippies” – sell everything from art and fashion to organic public land for communal use, waiting for our leaders to take action.” preserves. Both grew up in Central Otago and try to live and work sustainably. “The community is really cool here,” says Wilson. several houses have their own For local beekeeper David Milne, windmills for power generation, that means learning to work with and electric bikes are for sale or the natural environment, rather than hire at the Blueskin art gallery. trying to dominate it. Originally from The bees are fed with sugar syrup Now an internationally renowned shearwaters fly right over your head,” Scott Willis, who has an MA in Dunedin, he was earning his living to help them through winter and wildlife illustrator, he worked for he says. “It’s pretty scary, actually.” social anthropology, is manager of as a ceramic artist in the United treated for varroa, a disease spread the Edward Grey Institute at Oxford By his count, a thousand the Blueskin Resilient Communities States and farming co-operatively by mites that’s wiping out colonies in University before settling in Blueskin godwits nest across the estuary on Trust, set up in 2008 with the aim of on the outskirts of Wisconsin when the wild. Pollinators like honey bees Bay, where he can bird-spot from Warrington Spit, before making lowering the bay’s carbon footprint he took on his first bees. Now his play a vital role in producing a third the balcony of his home above the their long journey back to Siberia. and eventually making the region company, Blueskin Bay Honey, has of the world’s food crops and their estuary. In The Hand Guide to the Unlike those flighty birds, Mark self-sufficient in both food and dozens of hives thriving among the loss would have an enormous impact Birds of New Zealand, released in a Brown put down roots when he power production. One of its more native bush and microclimate of on the way we live, says Milne. new edition last year, his exquisite came here all those years ago and controversial projects is a proposal the valley, producing high-quality “Without people to manage the watercolours depict all 328 of our dug in. “I was never going to leave to place three wind turbines wildflower, manuka and kanuka honey hives [with varroa], they’d die out. native and introduced species. Waitati,” he says, “but the kids have on Porteous Hill, which would in this “pure and beautiful place”. But I’m of the opinion that life He’s seen albatrosses, southern right dragged me all around the world.” generate enough electricity for the This summer, Milne began running always finds a way. It’s a symbiotic whales and rare Hector’s dolphins Sally spent six years in London entire catchment of about 1000 guided hive tours where people relationship; you’re always working off Mapoutahi, where the inlet spills and Jock, the eldest of their three households.