End of the road: Over the hills and far away

By ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE

People ask Tina Morgan what she does all day, living at remote Port Charles near the top of the Coromandel Peninsula.

The Big Sandy Bay house she shares with husband Bill is at the end of 19km of spiralling gravel road over the hills from Colville, the historic hamlet which is the last place to get provisions before continuing north.

With Mt Moehau as a backdrop, the Morgans' beachfront home is a stone's throw from Coromandel Forest Park. Nine permanent residents share the bay with 500 holidaymakers in summer.

The tranquillity of the bushclad hills and sparkling blue sea has tempted others to stay but, within months, say the Morgans, they are "bored out of their minds".

However, after 24 years in the area, Mrs Morgan says she has no problem filling her time and does not miss city life.

The 61-year-old former nurse, who is in charge of the community's first aid box, is a justice of the peace and a marriage celebrant - "not that there is that much call for either here."

Mrs Morgan is also the librarian. Port Charles, with a population of about 80 in three bays, has had a humble library for more than 40 years, based first in a farmhouse kitchen and then in an empty honey-processing building.

"But that got a bit damp and musty and the books started to go mouldy."

So, in the mid-1980s, an 8ft by 6ft aluminium shed was erected in a resident's garden and lined with shelves. It houses about 1000 books, and members pay a family fee of $10 a year to borrow as often and as many as they wish.

The door is never locked and the library is self-service. Subscribers enter the titles they have taken in a register, and Mrs Morgan comes in regularly to make sure the returned books are put in their proper places in alphabetical order.

To keep stock fresh, 25 books are loaned by the Thames library every three months and there are also exchanges with three other small libraries around the peninsula.

"It is very informal. You used to have to take a torch, but now we have a light installed," Mrs Morgan says.

A former chairwoman of the Ratepayers and Residents Association and still on the committee, she has her finger firmly on the pulse of community needs and puts up her hand for working bees and social events.

Rebuilding the wharf and getting a sludge hole for septic tank refuse, to cut down on the cost of tankers transferring waste from the area, have been among association projects.

Then there is her Forest and Bird hat. In the 13 years since its formation, the 70-strong Upper Coromandel group has become a fully fledged branch of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society. Before that, Mrs Morgan used to travel to Thames for meetings, a trip of more than two hours each way.

As branch chairwoman, she is just as likely to be guiding visitors on the 7km Coromandel walkway or on an all-day climb up Mt Moehau as editing the newsletter or organising fundraising projects.

Mrs Morgan has helped junior conservationists to plant native trees, assisted Department of Conservation officers count birds, and she is the Port Charles possum controller, which involves looking after two dozen bait stations.

It was a circuitous route in more ways than one which brought the London-born, Manchester-bred woman to her special little corner of the world. She came to New Zealand to work as a nurse in Opotiki, followed by stints in Nelson and Auckland, and a year's "sabbatical" working as a postie in Mangere.

Delivering a registered letter one day, she got a fright when an over-enthusiastic dog leaped up to lick her and, instead, ripped her face with its teeth.

The animal's owners were so grateful the postie did not want their pet put down that they took her to their bach at Port Charles for a weekend.

Subsequent visits made Mrs Morgan more determined to find a place of her own there - which she finally did in 1978.

A year later, she married local carpenter Bill Morgan. Now 80, he still finds plenty to do and says: "If I died I wouldn't want to go to heaven. I want to stay here."