There is an area with lounge suites to sit in and two large areas with comfortable seats. The building is big and it echoes.
The happy mumble of the voices of over-65-year-olds all catching up with one another momentarily drowns out the nurses quietly calling out names of people to be injected.
Despite the chatter, it is a peaceful and serene place. The nurses are wonderful and welcoming.
Many are in our age group, recently retired but coming back to help their community deal with this scourge of a virus.
They are professional, efficient and very nice. The security guy on the door is a hoot, cracking jokes with us oldies. He is about our age anyway.
The young women on the reception desk are friendly and switched on. One even asks if I would like a cup of tea.
There are about 50 people waiting when we arrive. I look into the crowd and see a sea of familiar faces. We are not really allowed to mix and mingle of course so we all sit and wave to each other from a distance.
My town is big enough to live in anonymously but small enough to know a lot of people when one is out and about, so this gathering is a pleasant place to be for many of us.
It crossed my mind that many years past we would have met at the nearby hotel in the large lounge bar that then existed as young people, drinking, dancing and cavorting to the late hours.
Now a few doors up the road we are mostly all pensioners sitting together for an entirely different, necessary and sad reason.
Some of the older people are accompanied by their children, not much younger than us, but their "bubble", who also get the shots as well so that they are safe to continue looking after mum or dad.
Covid-19 has no respect for age, gender or race. Māori, Pākehā, Asian and Pasifika New Zealanders, we were all sitting there, beginning the process to try to rid our country of this pandemic.
We had our shots and then shuffled off to another seating area where we were met by three more nurses who sat us down.
Then one came over and sat with us talking about our experience and how we felt. We had to wait 20 minutes.
What impressed me the most was the professionalism and the good humour of the people running the centre.
No one was rushed or stressed, everything was done to minimise anxiety among their charges.
They vaccinate 250 people a day normally but the day we attended they had 300 to do. They are busy bunnies.
In about a month we will return to the old department building to receive our second shot.
We will then be safe to travel overseas - as if we could.
Covid-19 has changed our lives, probably for some of us, forever.
Free and easy travel will likely be years away because of variants such as Delta continuing to rampage across the world.
We may never be able to travel as freely as we were used to.
Remember the way international travel changed after 9/11, the increased security, and the restrictions on baggage.
Unfortunately, not all governments are acting as responsibly as others are; creating the long-term uncertainty we have about exposure.
The bubble with Australia, now popped, has shown us how complacency can lead to sudden increases in cases and deaths.
Western nations, whose populations believe in individual rights of expression and association, two foundations of democratic societies, will continue to have outbreaks because of selfish individuals exercising those rights without any care for others.
Can we all actually learn to stop being selfish and act responsibly, thinking of one another instead of our own immediate pleasure? We'd better.
