The Aotea Company's Bayard Sinnema inside a condensation tent on Great Barrier Island where sea salt is being extracted for a new artisan product range. Photo / Phil Taylor
One of the Hauraki Gulf’s most remote and stunningly beautiful islands, Great Barrier’s isolation is both its greatest asset and its greatest challenge. The answer, reckons former Aucklander Bayard Sinnema, lies right at his feet.
Bayard Sinnema was in the planning stages of moving to Singapore with his wife, Leanne, when she was offered the job as principal of Kaitoke School on Aotea Great Barrier Island.
That left the Auckland couple with a tough choice to make, between a bustling island nation in the heart of Southeast Asia and a remote, off-grid island in the Hauraki Gulf with a permanent population of only 1250 people and no reticulated power or water supply.
Their decision to move to the Barrier in 2022 turned out to be an even more significant life change than decamping to Singapore.
Winters are notoriously challenging, especially for city folk not used to the level of ingenuity and self-sufficiency required, and the mainland is a half-hour plane flight or a long, gut-churning ferry ride away.
Still, the opportunity to immerse themselves in a tight-knit community and a landscape of such wild, natural beauty was too good to pass by.
“We’d had an amazing holiday here with our children the summer before, and I had that ‘honeymoon Barrier’ in my head,” says Leanne. “So I said to Bayard, should we do it? Because at that stage, he could work anywhere.”
For Bayard, there were only two provisos. One was uninterrupted access to the internet. “And if we were going to do it, we had to cut and go – sell up everything and find a place [on the island]," he says. “Because otherwise you’ve got an exit strategy.”
So that’s what they did. For the next three years, Bayard continued working remotely as the commercial director for a global glass manufacturing company’s team in Asia.
To ensure a reliable Wi-Fi connection, he signed up with Starlink and installed the dish himself, clambering on to the roof of the schoolhouse where they lived for the first 18 months.
Surviving that escapade was a kind of initiation ceremony in itself. Pest control was another priority for Leanne, who’d inherited an underfunded school somewhat worse for wear after lengthy Covid lockdowns.
When you don’t have all the services you once took for granted – or a Bunnings down the road – you make do with what you have, she says. “That can be really rewarding. You start to think about living in a different way.”
One of three primary schools on the island, Kaitoke has steadily grown its roll over the past couple of years, recently qualifying for a third teacher. The swimming pool has been refurbished and a commercial kitchen installed, where parents make meals on site through the Lunches in Schools programme.
Barry, the couple’s huntaway, goes to work with Leanne most days and has become the school’s official therapy dog, instinctively knowing where he’s needed when one of the kids is in emotional distress.
Bayard, too, became embedded in the community, joining the Coastguard, running sausage sizzles at the school and helping out as a fill-in masher at Aotea Brewing, a solar-powered craft brewery.
When his Singapore role wrapped up earlier this year, he and Leanne – who have four adult children between them – had another big call to make. This time, if they were going to commit to the island, Bayard didn’t want another corporate job that would keep him with one foot on the mainland.
So he followed the advice he was given when they first moved over from Auckland: Don’t rush the Barrier, a local told him. The Barrier will show itself to you.
“I did a lot of thinking around what we could do on the island, in a smart, sustainable way that doesn’t change what draws people to the Barrier in the first place,” says Bayard, noting the lack of primary industry on the island outside tourism and conservation.
“There are families who have a history here and want to come back, but there has to be something for them to come back to.”
Identifying the potential for Great Barrier to transform itself into a boutique innovation hub, his vision has now begun to unfold at lightning speed.
Through his new business initiative, The Aotea Company, several different product lines are being developed using key ingredients sourced from the island.
In July, Bayard put up a marquee in one of the local parks and tossed some home-kill sausages on the grill to celebrate the launch of Barrier Buzz – soda drinks sold in recyclable glass bottles and sweetened with Great Barrier mānuka honey instead of sugar.
Next off the block was Stumpy & Chop, boxes of naturally seasoned mānuka and kānuka splits for burning in a brazier, smoker or barbecue. Largely harvested from storm-damaged trees or those removed due to age or safety concerns, the wood adds a sweet, smoky flavour to fish or meat.
Still in its early stages is the Island Salt Collective, a range of artisan sea salt extracted from water collected off the coast and processed in a special condensation tent using energy from the sun. Bath salts, the first release from its wellness line, is due out over the next few weeks.
Lucia Victoria and Santiago Valentin, an Argentinian couple who operate the popular Good Neighbours Food Truck at Medlands Beach, are experimenting with sea-salt flavourings. A complementary range of sauces and rubs is in the pipeline, too.
In the same way that craft brewers have created a niche market within the beer industry, Bayard sees an opportunity to form a loose collective with other innovative boutique producers who have a focus on wellbeing and sustainability.
The legacy he envisions for his adopted home goes far beyond a few cottage industries. A 2023 report by Euromonitor International valued New Zealand’s soft-drinks market at more than $2 billion, with some 560 million litres sold each year.
Early on, Bayard laid out his plans at a hui with the local iwi, Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai. As the company expands, he’d like to set up a scholarship or mentoring programme for a young person from the island, chosen by mana whenua – perhaps partnering with a university to fund further research and development.
“The ability to have a sense of ownership is probably the critical factor in creating industries here where people can be employed,” he says.
“It’s about building bridges but also creating the spark in people’s imagination about what could be. I love the idea of being able to create those opportunities. What do you want in the future? That’s the conversation that resonates with me.”
Bayard has some history of his own on Barrier. In the 80s, when he was building up hours for his commercial pilot’s licence, he’d make regular flights to the island with Leanne, staying overnight at a friend’s bach at Medlands Beach.
In part, that inspired the brand name and label for Barrier Buzz, which features an illustration of a light plane. “It’s the buzz of the planes, the buzz of the bees – just the general buzz of the place,” he says.
According to the latest Census figures, the Barrier’s population rose by 33.7% between 2018 and 2023, after a period of slight decline. Even so, it remains the least crowded place to live in Auckland (Waiheke Island, by contrast, has more than 20 times the number of people per square kilometre).
An entrepreneurial streak runs in Bayard’s family. His grandfather, who emigrated from Holland in the 50s, was the first to bring flavoured yoghurt to New Zealand, as well as the soft-serve ice cream that was sold at New Zealand’s first McDonald’s store when it opened in Porirua in 1976.
As a teenager, Bayard had his own chance to observe how the business world operated, accompanying his father on work trips to Australia – catching a red-eye flight and returning the same day. “Being Dutch, he never wanted to pay for a night’s accommodation,” he says, with a laugh.
Later, Bayard joined the family firm, a printing business that had 70 people on the payroll until China undercut the market, and they pivoted to contract manufacturing offshore. Now his son, George, is working with him part-time on the company’s latest iteration.
Large-scale production is simply not viable on the Barrier. Instead, the focus is on concepts with a high intellectual property value and a story that connects to life on the island.
Great Barrier Honey’s owner and head beekeeper, Nikki Watts, runs about 100 hives, which are harvested at the end of January. She says the honey she supplies for Barrier Buzz sodas is free from contaminants, such as glyphosates, because there’s no large-scale agriculture nearby.
“Not having a lot of chemicals in our environment is really good for the bees,” she says, removing a frame dripping with viscous, amber-coloured mānuka honey.
Untroubled by our intrusion, the colony vibrates with a soft hum. When bees are distressed, they roar.
Like almost everyone else on the island, Watts holds down multiple jobs and volunteer roles. She and her husband, who have raised five children on the Barrier, have a business upholstering outdoor furniture. She also manages a restaurant three days a week and is on the board of trustees for the Aotea Education Trust.
In October, she was voted on to the Aotea/Great Barrier Local Board after narrowly missing out at the 2022 election when there was a tie for the final spot. As required by statute, the deadlock was settled by a coin toss, under supervision at the police station in Claris.
Down the road at Kaitoke School, pad thai and salad are on the menu for lunch. Clustered around wooden tables in the courtyard, the kids are a bundle of energy, leaping to their feet to help clear up when they’ve polished their plates clean.
“Mahi tahi” – school chores – range from washing the dishes to being in charge of lost property or collecting fresh eggs from the chicken house. When Kaitoke hosted a talent show earlier in the year, one of the local dads was a big hit when he performed a magic trick, putting his daughter in a box and cutting her in half with a chainsaw.
Before signing on as principal, Leanne managed specialist teaching support for learning and behaviour across 60-plus schools in central Auckland, including the three on Great Barrier. Under her watch, Kaitoke has gained its international accreditation, hosting a family from Holland and now fielding queries from Asia, South America and Hawaii.
She says the population data she monitors for planning purposes indicates a growing number of people in their late 20s and early 30s are returning to the Barrier as they look to start families of their own.
Limited job opportunities mean it’s likely some will need to work remotely or choose to live on the island part-time. Bayard hopes that will gradually change as his fledgling business enterprises bed in and have more to offer locals who share his long-term vision.
“That hybrid model worked for me. It can work for lots of people,” he says. “If you live the values we need, you could come and go [from the island]. So being emotionally here might be okay. Maybe that’s how it starts.”
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.