Steve Braunias flies south for the winter of his years

For Steve Braunias, the answer may be Timaru.

OPINION

Timaru is the possible answer to the question that haunts my days and sleepless nights, “Where will I live when I am too old and unemployable to continue living in the louche and affluent style I have become accustomed to in Auckland?” I flew to Timaru last week. U3A invited me to make a speech. They put me up at a hotel on the main highway with views of the harbour and port, and I sat on the balcony with a cup of Moccona medium roast instant coffee, looked at the pale blue South Canterbury sky, and thought, “Maybe here.”

Timaru has its obvious and immediate charms, first and foremost Caroline Bay, that Victorian ideal of seaside England with its wide, tree-lined paths leading to the beach, glittering like a bracelet on an outstretched arm. It was 17 degrees last week, swimming weather; strange, though, to see people swimming right beside the port, with its cranes and its stacks of Maersk containers. Trucks roared hither and yon along the highway, to and from the port - I sipped at my coffee and marvelled at a truck that advertised it was transporting a quantity of molasses.

Timaru has one of the great coastal walks of New Zealand. One way leads to a lighthouse. I went the other way, because it leads to a far more important monument, vital to the New Zealand way of life, crucial to the economic health and well-being of Timaru – the meatworks. Smithfields Alliance meatworks may well lay claim as the most scenic meatworks in New Zealand, with its clear views of the sea to the east, and the snowcapped Alps to the west. I got talking with a man walking the coastal track. He said he worked at Smithfields for 33 years and that it currently employed 400 people. It looked pretty quiet at the works so I asked what was happening at this time of year, and he replied, “I don’t think they’re killing at the moment.” I savoured that sentence as I drank the Moccona and gazed at the pale blue skies.

Timaru has lots of good shops, including a fancy Ballantynes department store. Christchurch Ballantynes was closed for eight months after the 2011 earthquakes; bus trips were organised from Christchurch to the Timaru store so that loyal customers could get their Ballantynes fix. A nice woman came out of Ballantynes when I walked by and said she had heard my speech the previous day and that she liked it very much. She said that she belonged to the Timaru Dinner Group, and would put it to the committee that they ask me to return to Timaru and make a speech to members. “I might come back,” I wondered later that afternoon, sunning myself on the hotel balcony, “and never leave.”

Timaru is imperfect. The meatworks was fined $57,000 in September for dumping 77,000 litres of waste, including high and quite unscenic concentrations of faecal indicator bacteria, that caused “serious harm to an environment of high value and vulnerable sensitivity”, ruled the District and Environment Court. A nice walk through the Caroline Bay domain was interrupted by graffiti on a wall that read, without the asterix of course, “N*gga”. A sad story in the excellent Timaru Courier newspaper reported the death of an elderly man on a mobility scooter, which crashed into a car on October 17. Thomas Patrick Casey was 95. I put down the paper and finished my Moccona while darkness settled over the sea.

Timaru is friendly, quiet, attractive. It has magnificent parrots in the aviary at Caroline Bay, shorebirds at the Washdyke lagoon, lupins and poppies in the sand dunes. I could see myself living there, knocking around in one of the many great big brick houses with tiny little windows, browsing at two good bookshops (the independent Timaru Booksellers, and a second-hand gem, Readers Book Exchange), scoffing toasted sandwiches that come with a free serving of fries at Sopheze cafe – how generous is that? We all want someplace nice in our declining years. We all want someplace where we’re made to feel welcome. We all just want to drink a cup of coffee in peace and sunshine, safe in a port we can call home.