Heading for the sun: Townies take to the country life

Sally and Grant Marshall now live a more balanced and healthy lifestyle. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

A century of apparently inexorable population drift to Auckland may be about to end, as baby-boomers like Grant and Sally Marshall seek to escape the city traffic now that their children have left home.

The Marshalls, in their mid-fifties, have sold up in the city but still organise TV commercials from their stunning new house on 6.8ha of former farmland on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour 1 hour north of Auckland.

About 100 lifestyle blocks have now been occupied by former "townies" along Oneriri Rd, which runs west from Kaiwaka past the Marshalls' place.

A further 100 or so are on the market, and a developer has just paid close to $10 million for another 650ha farm. If the Kaipara District Council approves, that farm will be carved up into 140 blocks, each with a coveted water frontage.

Economic consultant Phil McDermott, who recently returned from Sydney to buy his own lifestyle property out of Warkworth, believes we are at the start of a "sea-change" in our population patterns. Centralisation is weakening and centrifugal forces are gathering.

"The factors leading to this are strong: flexible work, an older population, differential housing prices, availability of land."

A consultant who lives near Oneriri Rd, Owen McShane, says broadband, satellite TV, better roads and airports have made him better connected to his clients from the edge of the Kaipara than friends are in inner-city Freemans Bay, where the TV reception is "rotten".

He sticks his neck out and predicts: "The next census will show Auckland in decline."

That seems unlikely, given that the next census is a mere two months away, in March. But the early signs, like the Marshalls' move, are worth pondering.

When they sold their advertising business after years of frenetic work and eating out with clients, the Marshalls wanted a healthier lifestyle - a place where they could still do some creative work but balanced by some physical labour.

They bought a pleasure garden of 15,000 trees. Sheep are banned. "We call them land maggots," the Marshalls say. They mow their park on tractors, water the trees, and have planted 100 olive trees.

"We are much fitter than we have ever been. Grant is like an entirely different person," Mrs Marshall says. "We live out of the gardens. We have a huge orchard."

They have also started a new business to gradually replace their TV commercials - a line of panoramic photographic posters of Northland.

Such "urban" activities are changing the nature of the rural community so much that Mr McShane believes the old rural/urban distinction is ending. Although the lifestylers are mostly pre-retirement or retirement-age baby-boomers, their move into the countryside is creating jobs for younger people to do their gardens or in cafes.

Dr McDermott notes that Statistics NZ's business demographic survey shows non-farm employment grew faster in first four years after the 2001 census in Northland (up 22 per cent), Waikato and Bay of Plenty (both 21 per cent) than in Auckland ( 19 per cent).

"We are losing the simplistic view where Auckland is the primate city, to one where Auckland is the centre of an urbanised region that stretches from Taupo north," he says.

Both experts say Auckland's growth has been built on high rates of immigration. That is now dwindling - down from a net inflow of 39,000 at the peak in 2001-02 to just 6000 in the year to last October.

So far, Statistics NZ population estimates do not reflect these nervous signals. Its latest figures, published in October, said Auckland's population grew by a fraction under 10 per cent in the four years to last June, 2 per cent ahead of the next-fastest grower, Nelson, and roughly twice as fast as Waikato and Bay of Plenty.

Its chief demographer, Mansoor Khawaja, says these estimates take account of building permits and other economic data, as well as births, deaths and migration. But they do not use the business demographic survey.

We will have to wait until after the census on March 7 to find out whether his estimates are right.