Sandra Roberts tells Elisabeth Easther what it's like living in Waitoki, a rural spot north of Auckland.
Waitoki is one of those places you drive through and don't realise it, the only sign is that it changes from a 100km to a 50km zone.
It originated as a farming community, and there are still some good holdings here, mainly dairy farming. And then there's the growing population of lifestylers, many of whom have yet to "get" the lifestyle and for now it's more like a life sentence. It is hard slog some days. We moved out here from the city about eight years ago and we're finally rounding the corner on our block - we've just got a ride-on lawn mower and some other big boys' toys. In fact, you can't get me off the ride-on these days. Farmers probably wonder why we mow our 2ha block but the lawn looks so pretty. We have some large dairy farms right at our boundary, so it goes from pretty grass to cow farms. And yet I can be at the Civic in just 30 minutes, if I leave home outside peak traffic.
Waitoki is north of Auckland, people usually discover us when they get diverted from Wellsford on the Kaipara Coast Highway. That's us on Highway 16. There are no shops but we've got a lovely cafe called DD's. She does homemade food and delicious coffee and, on Friday nights, they have amazing burgers and fish 'n' chips. You have to ring in first and wait for half an hour, but it's worth it.
For our entertainment, one of our close neighbours has a clubroom and on Sundays he extends an open invitation to all the neighbours. There's a pool table, and table tennis, and it's a BYO for a catch-up and to tell tall tales from the week. Recently we were all outraged at the price of lamb at the supermarket so we invested in some fencing and bought a couple of sheep each. It's a nice little community project - although the economy of scale isn't great, our two sheep have cost us a couple of grand each. There have been scheduled musters and some unscheduled musters, but it has been fun.
