The wealthy beach resort of Pauanui is sometimes called "Poofanui." GREG DIXON previews a documentary which explains the name.
Once upon a time there was a young man who had a big, old dream.
From the wilderness, he imagined, he would create a paradise on Earth. He would turn water into land
and land into water, cut wide streets and carve wide canals.
His was a dream of a beautiful place, a safe place, a summer place - and you'd have to be filthy rich to live there.
Fairytale phooey, wouldn't you say? Well no, meet Ian Hopper and get a load of his dream, Pauanui.
Hopper was the bloke who figured back in the late 60s that there was a buck to be made turning a wind-formed sandspit on the eastern flank of the Coromandel Peninsula into God's Own Beach Resort.
He mortgaged his vision, and soon it came to pass that he made a mint subdividing and selling what some now refer to as "Poofanui." What a hoot.
"I don't quite understand," Hopper says of the Poofanui tag in tonight's Inside New Zealand documentary, Pauanui - Playground for the Rich (8.30, TV3).
"Is it because it's a bit cleaner, a bit tidier and we take a bit of pride in the place?"
Well no, Ian, that's not it at all. And to find out why, you have only to spend an hour watching this immensely funny, cunningly crafted "tribute" to a place that 99.9 per cent of us will never call our home away from home.
Opening with shots of aeroplanes in garages and boats at the bottom of the garden, the documentary introduces us to two families with holiday homes in Pauanui, the Watsons and the Ryans.
Greg and Donna Watson are, like most who holiday in this white-bread paradise, from the Auckland area. He's in "broadcast communications" (whatever that means) and she is undoubtedly the unwitting star of Pauanui - Playground for the Rich.
Sue and Pat Ryan also hail from the Big Jafa. They're "estate agents" and have a daughter who enters beauty contests ("She's done quite well in that field," says Pat).
See how they play. After a hard night drinking Donna takes her annual outing on a jet ski. Pat sits in the surf and digs for "free" tuatua. Greg plays golf and is shocked that someone has vandalised a pine tree. "Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles," says Donna as she orders a drink at a flash local restaurant.
Meanwhile the teens run wild. Down at a local waterhole a couple of stoners (their faces have been pixilated) make incomprehensible remarks while toking on their bong. Two girls in expensive bikinis take graceless swigs from a bottle of cheap wine. After a night at Hopper's mobile disco (set up to keep the kids busy at night), Greg and Donna's son Nicholas gets some nasty bruises on his elbows.
This is summer hols as a three-ring circus. But then the rich are not like other people - though some of those in Pauanui insist they are.
"We are comfortable, but we have worked very, very hard to be comfortable," says Sue, who doesn't seem to understand that the poor also work very, very hard.
"We think we are very average. But I have to appreciate that we are not, just from what we see in the news. We would have to be very silly not to think we're comfortable."
How comforting for the rest of us.
If nothing else Pauanui - Playground for the Rich is a public service, and a waggish one at that.
It plays it very straight, keeps its voiceover upbeat and uncritical and lets the people from Poofanui hang themselves.
Better still, we're all invited. Unlike Pauanui, Pauanui - Playground for the Rich is free to everyone.
The wealthy beach resort of Pauanui is sometimes called "Poofanui." GREG DIXON previews a documentary which explains the name.
Once upon a time there was a young man who had a big, old dream.
From the wilderness, he imagined, he would create a paradise on Earth. He would turn water into land
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.