Wearing red band gumboots and holding two brass rods, Tauranga man Grant Birchall walks over the ground and uses his `gift' to find water hundreds of feet below the surface.
He is one of the country's few professional water diviners and has been called upon during the drought.
In the past three to four weeks, Mr Birchall said business had increased 45 per cent, despite not advertising.
``There is a demand out there and I'm very busy at the moment,'' he told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend from his Mount Maunganui home.
``People are now realising that I am out there and I want to help people as much as I can with this drought.''
Tomorrow, Mr Birchall is off to the South Island to water divine, then next week he will travel to the Kaipara district to find water on a farmer's dry paddock.
Mr Birchall claims he puts his body into the earth's magnetic field and channels his energy into two brass rods to sense where and how wide an aquifer is, how fast the water is flowing and whether it is hot or cold. He can also tell how deep the water is.
``When I walk over the edge of an aquifer I get prickles all over my body. Then, [when determining the depth of the aquifer], it feels like I've leapt off a building because I'm going straight down and all of a sudden you feel all this pressure pushing at you. It's quite exhausting and takes a lot of physical and mental energy to do.''
The deepest aquifer he has found was 820m but most are around 90 to 180m deep.
Mr Birchall has been a water diviner for about 20 years, working throughout New Zealand and Australia. At the Mount Maunganui Golf Club this week, he demonstrated his gift in front of course superintendent Steven White.
``What he can do is pretty incredible. ``Thanks to [Mr Birchall], our water irrigation system is a lot more reliable, which of course keeps the grass green and the players happy.''
The club can draw up to 22.5 litres of water a second from its main bore, he said.
Mr Birchall's father was a water diviner but he only picked up the gift two years after his father died. He said some people were skeptical of his work but his results proved his `gift' to be real and reliable, he said.
``There are skeptics out there and some people do read it as `witchety poo' but I believe it is a gift and I like that I'm able to help people,'' he said.
``Drilling is so expensive and too many people have drilled in the wrong places so I like to be able to help people and so many people are suffering at the moment, particularly because of this drought.''
The New Zealand Skeptics did not respond to phone calls and emails before this story was published.
What is water divining?
It is an attempt to locate water in underground rivers, called aquifers. A Y-shaped or L-shaped divining rod can be used, although some people do not use any equipment. Dowsing, which is a type of divining, is believed to have originated in Germany during the 15th century, when it was used to find metals.