In the mists of my personal history, back when capitalism confined itself to five working days and there were enough houses to go round, foreigners were bemused to find themselves in a country that essentially shut down, not just for the whole of January but also every Saturday and Sunday.
The memory is of endless days and time for the important stuff among families at baches or iconic summer campgrounds with a lodge and a communal piano, and, in Auckland and the Gulf, whole fleets of treasured family cruising yachts that glued young families together with life-long memories of surf and adventure, food and abundance. Enough for the whole year.
The distinctive smell of kapok mattresses at night and beach barbecues after long days of hunter-gathering were sewn into our DNA and all of us could swim like fishes. Summer friendships and traditions were integral in every coastal campground and favourite bays meant yachts rafting up for seasonal news and the retelling of favourite hijinks.
I mention all this not in the sense of nostalgia but as an aspiration to fight for in the current uneasy times as social cohesion teeters.
An antidote to the insatiable greed of the god Mamon that would have everyone but the-rich-and-sorted forced to feed ‘The Economy’ – that capitalist, monopolistic Ponzi scheme that is plunder on a planetary scale, if you will.
Of course the sheer magnificence of the Hauraki Gulf Islands is still here.
There are literally thousands of anchorages with curving, bottle-green waves, sweeping beaches comparable to anywhere else in the known universe and Waiheke’s Mediterranean landscapes with their internationally-renowned vineyards and olivegroves.
This year it’s sporting the best blaze of pōhutukawa flowers in years and all of it swept clean and fresh in the pre-Christmas season.
Up close, as it is in a small community, the fundamental time-poverty, reckless consumption and absence of gratitude in our current society as a whole often seems even more tragic against such a magnificently generous backdrop.
Socially, the rampant premiums on the costs of living on a desirable offshore island – ferries, freight, fuel, new housing costs and food – have stabilised the island’s population at 9000 for a decade. Forty percent of residential houses are left empty according to the latest census figures, which also showed a steady loss from the schools of young families buckling under the strains imposed by wildly inflated rents and the distant, and often disdainful, city council’s preference for lucrative Airbnb builds.
On the other hand, the community cohesion that gave the whole country its essentially cheerful, can-do character (until Rogernomics broke over our heads in the 1970s) lives on here and the core population still battles with the big issues and finds useful solutions for fixing the small ones, many referencing backwards to earlier and more generous decisions including green space between the villages and our enviable coastal pōhutukawa forests.
The boundaries of public discussion are widened with information and a deep well of professional expertise, although it’s often hard yakka.
A universally approved proposal for one last no-take marine reserve on the island’s northern coastline still languishes with Wellington despite the gulf’s marine habitat having taken a pounding from commercial and recreational overload, sending species and fish stocks functionally extinct, year-on-year, for the last three decades.
On the other scale, community arts, theatre, music, sculpture and repurposed found objects thrive. Even books get a recycled life and the community-run transfer station and our local recycling facility diverts extraordinary amounts of glass, paper, building materials and second-hand retail as part of its contract.
For years, the core island psyche has always seemed at the forefront of changing global issues and sensibilities. In 1985, within a year after the island’s first May Day marches to stop nuclear ships in New Zealand waters, Prime Minister David Lange was debating the issue at Oxford.
Islanders have been at Moruroa, Greenham Common, walked for peace across North America and attended marches up Queen Street for just causes from birth.
There is plenty of evidence that we as a race need to redefine our relationship with nature and our part in it.
The natural magnificence around us creates obligations and relationships to people, ancestors, land, Law and creation itself. We could be so much happier if we went with that.
• Liz Waters
© Waiheke Gulf News Ltd 2025
