The Great New Zealand Road Trip: The small village with an astounding business story, featuring a global superstar

NZ Herald editor-at-large Shayne Currie is on a two-week road trip to gauge the mood of the nation and meet everyday and notable Kiwis making a difference in their communities and wider world. Today, he finds out about the revival of small-town Matiere and an astounding hidden story featuring a global superstar. Meanwhile, we have Nine Questions With... broadcaster, businessman, and rugby boss Bailey Mackey and learn more about Jamie Macphail, who spoke to Mitchell Hageman about his quest to reignite NZ’s old rural halls.

At one end of this rural New Zealand village sit two old buildings with slightly faded but colourful facades, one blue and one pink. This is the end of the village where the cellphone coverage is okay - travel 1km down the road, it becomes patchy, and eventually non-existent.

The blue building is Matiere’s old bank - the last transaction in the Bank of New South Wales building was processed in the 1980s. The pink building used to be the butcher.

It’s quite an effort to reach Matiere, in the King Country, in the first place. From New Plymouth, and off SH3, one route takes you over a hilly and narrow gravel road, with logging trucks a frequent, oncoming threat. Beautiful but dangerous.

Many motorists likely whizz through the village without a second glance, heading to “bigger smoke” towns such as nearby Taumarunui or Ōhura.

In Matiere, buildings and businesses such as Matiere Motors and the Margans supply store closed long ago, marked only by their faded signs.

Visitors would be also easily forgiven for thinking those pink and blue buildings were also closed up - shades cover the windows, and there’s little sign of life.

Jenny Etherington and Thomas Mortimer outside the former butcher shop, one of the buildings they use for their business.

And that’s where people’s theories about this dot of a village would be wrong.

Housed inside the two buildings is a business owned by Jenny Etherington and Thomas Mortimer that manufactures and distributes children’s and babies’ swings to the world. And not just to everyday, satisfied customers, but to some of the biggest names on the planet.

The pair invited the Herald to their home - a beautiful, converted Catholic church just a five-minute walk around the corner - to talk about the benefits, and their love, of small-village life in New Zealand.

Jenny has been attached to Matiere all her life. She grew up here, travelled the world and lived in different cities, but eventually settled back more than 30 years ago. As a young woman, she bought the old church for the princely sum of $1100.

Thomas is Swedish but has been in Matiere for 35 years. The pair have converted the old church as a home while still retaining its religious charm including arched windows, and the confessional door now leading to the laundry.

They take me on a tour of the village, including the local Cossie (Cosmopolitan) Club - which Jenny used to manage and membership was once 300 but now sits about 100 - and the next-door community hall, which houses historical pictures of Matiere, a community that has variously thrived on industries such as sawmilling, brickworks and dairy-farming.

In the 1950s, the population was believed to be around 800-1000 people.

“Once a thriving village (like many in New Zealand) we have been struggling to keep a community,” Jenny told me in an initial email.

“Change is afoot again. Forgotten World Adventures stop in our village putting it on the map and locals are working hard to make it a beautiful community and keep it thriving. We are looking towards low-key tourism with people passing through and enjoying our hospitality, beautiful countryside and having a beer with the locals at the Cossie Club.”

The Forgotten World Adventures business carries tourists on golf carts on the rail line that runs adjacent to the village’s main road. A group stopped off for afternoon tea on Wednesday, while the Herald was there.

The Forgotten World Adventures business carries tourists on converted golf carts on a rail line through Matiere.

The Matiere School day was also just finishing. It is thriving again, with a roll of about 35. That’s big for these parts - some rolls in rural schools are down to single figures. Many put Matiere School’s success down to the principal.

Thomas and Jenny love living here. They have no firm idea of the population - perhaps 30 in the actual village and maybe 100 in the immediate surrounding area - but they all know each other, and life is more relaxed.

They can’t believe how people in the big cities now think they have to buy a coffee or lunch every day. What happened to making your own, they question.

When Thomas wants eggs, he’ll visit a neighbour with chickens: “They’re fresh and the yolk is actually yellow”, he laughs.

There’s a misconception, says Jenny, that life in a village is slow. Even while operating a business, there are still other matters to attend to, including property upkeep and community meetings.

And yes, while salaries might not be as high as in big cities, neither is the cost of living. Everyday essentials are not as expensive. A property next to the Cossie Club is about to go on the market. It’s on a half-acre and likely to sell for about $250,000.

“When you live in the country you are not exposed so much to consumerism, so you don’t need so much money. You live cheaper,” says Thomas.

He also highlights that anyone with the right business idea can operate from virtually anywhere.

“We have the same stress but our walk to work is five minutes, and look what we wake up to,” he says, pointing outside at the trees and fields. “The birds are singing!”

Jenny Etherington and Thomas Mortimer in their packaging room in Matiere.

Which brings us back to the baby swings and their company, Solvej Swings.

They first came up with the business idea when their daughter, Solvej, who’s now 30 and in Wellington, loved being in a swing when she was a baby. Thomas did not want his “princess” in a hard, plastic mould swing - and so designed one using canvas and rope.

When friends saw it, they were keen on one themselves. The couple made a handful more. The business blossomed from there. At a peak, they have sold up to 5000 a year.

Thomas and Jenny show me through the old bank building. One room houses sewing equipment, another room is chokka with boxes of swings ready to be shipped off to all corners of the world - they sell in Europe, the US, Australia and the Middle East. The next-door building - the pink, former butcher’s shop - is where they oil the wood for the swings.

After leaving Matiere, and as I dig deeper into the company, an extraordinary revelation. From this corner of the world, deep in the heart of the Ruapehu district, I find out that one of their customers is Kourtney Kardashian, one of the world’s biggest socialites and media personalities.

Kourtney Kardashian. Photo / Getty

I text Jenny, who confirms it.

She replies: “Originally Kourtney put in an order for a swing for herself and I thought we would not see or hear any more and then two years later we were contacted by her PA asking if could she put our swings on her Holiday List.

“We are currently waiting to hear if [Hollywood actress] Hillary Swank is going to review the swings for one of our stores in the USA. They have given her two swings for her twins.”

Amazing things are happening in Matiere.

Day 10 - New Plymouth to Taupō

Daniel Allen was feeling ambivalent about life at Taumarunui's Rusty Nail Tavern.

As I headed from Matiere to Taupō yesterday afternoon, I stopped in at Taumarunui’s Rusty Nail Tavern.

Bartender Daniel Allen wasn’t feeling confident that life would be any different, with the likes of a new Government. Regardless of what happened, it had little impact on us “plebs”, he said. His mood, he believed, was common amongst the public: “Ambivalent”.

With the all-electric Volkswagen ID.5 sitting on around 45 per cent charge - and still about 200km on its range - I headed for Taupō via the scenic but very steep State Highway 41.

The Volkswagen ID.5 at the Waituhi lookout on SH41 - with Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe in the distance.

I became a little anxious as the range started plummeting as I was climbing the steep hill. At one stage it came down to less than 100km.

But I gained all of that back on the downhill side coming into the southern end of Lake Taupō, with the car’s regenerative system kicking in. By the time I reached Taupō, I had still 19 per cent charge on the clock and a range of just under 100km. It’s off to the ChargeNet station this morning, before I head to Rotorua.

Shayne Currie is travelling the country on the Herald’s Great New Zealand Road Trip. Read the full series here.

The Great NZ Road Trip heads from Taupō to Rotorua today.