He Tāngata: Susan Trodden of Pirongia Tourism

Sarajevo in Bosnia. Photo / Getty Images

Elisabeth Easther talks to the chairwoman of Pirongia Tourism.

I'm a fourth-generation Hamiltonian. I grew up in Frankton, and as a child it was a big deal to go to Raglan for a day trip. When I was 12, we went to Australia, this was a major undertaking and my parents saved for over a year. We spent a few days in Sydney and it felt so exotic. Taking a train from Sydney to Brisbane, because we were on a budget, we went third class, which meant we had to sit upright in our seats all night. I remember it being a horrible experience, but knowing we were going to Surfers Paradise made it bearable. But for some reason, everywhere we went, we bought potato fritters. They were what people were eating in Australia in the early 1980s and that holiday was defined by them.

When I lived in Japan, my flatmate and I travelled from Osaka to Tokyo, and she arranged a ride with an employee of the company she worked for.
Thanks to this driver's tattoos and missing fingers, we quickly realised he was a Yakuza courier delivering Kobe beef to a Yakuza family. He spoke no English but he did have a Best of the Beatles cassette with eight songs on it, so our only way to communicate for nine hours in a car was by singing Beatles' songs. But it wasn't safe to drive at night, so halfway there we stopped at what turned out to be a Pachinko parlour. We were fed a meal of pure Kobe beef, which is extraordinarily expensive, then Mama-San, the madam who looks after the Yakuza men, locked us in a room in the back of the building and told us to stay there because it wasn't safe for us. We didn't speak much Japanese and she had no English and we spent the whole night wide awake and worried.

When the war was on in Sarajevo, I decided to explore Eastern Europe by train. When my friend and I arrived in Hungary, we spoke to a travel agent, who told us that the border to Yugoslavia had been closed and we had to be sure we stayed on the right side. On the overnight train from Hungary to Slovakia, we were the only tourists and the guard insisted on taking our passports. Then at about four in morning this guy was banging on our door saying, "get up, get up get up". We came so close to missing our stop which would've meant getting off on the wrong side of the border in Sarajevo without our passports in the middle of a civil war. That could've turned out badly.

Susan Trodden almost landed up in Sarajevo without her passport in the middle of a civil war. Photo / Supplied

I met my husband on a Top Deck tour where he was the cook. When the tour ended, he kept travelling because he had two more seasons to go and I returned to London where I was teaching at a private primary school. I don't remember how we got back in touch, there was no email, but we started a relationship while living in different countries. Because I was living in a flat with no phone, wherever he was in the world, on Fridays at midday English time, he would ring my school. The staff would find me, and we'd talk for 10 minutes. He might be on a payphone in Russia or Germany, once he rang from the Arctic Circle, and for a year that's how we did things.

When it was time to settle down, we chose Pirongia because we wanted to live in a village and we could see amazing opportunities here. I see it as this perfect outpost. The people who move here have chosen to live in what's almost like an intentional community. Everybody knows your name, you can be as involved as you want to be, and there's a real sense of people wanting to make the town a better place. We've got a Sharing Shed where you can put excess produce, we buy local coffee, and our florist grows her own flowers. We're at the foot of Pirongia Mountain, so it's perfect for people who like the outdoors. We have walks, a river, the mountain-bike track, a hunting club. If you fancy going to the beach it's less than an hour to Raglan or Kawhia and just 45 minutes to the glow-worms, and when the cycleway joins up with Te Awa people can bike to Te Awamutu and Cambridge. When you come into the village, it looks like such a pretty place, and people are really drawn to it. Our tagline is "Come for an hour, come for a day, come for a lifetime" because that's what happens. People visit, then they want to move here.

Never in a million years did I think I'd end up running a tourism organisation, but because we're being impacted by an avalanche of tourists, we're concerned with looking after our environment, and preserving what's beautiful while also wanting to share it.

Further information: see pirongia.org.nz