{"id":4349,"date":"2015-08-22T20:03:18","date_gmt":"2015-08-22T08:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/?p=4349"},"modified":"2016-01-30T10:53:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T21:53:55","slug":"whangarei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/whangarei\/","title":{"rendered":"Whangarei"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Dog on her old bed on her new deck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Would you believe that I’ve moved to a town that I first visited* only several months earlier? It feels like\u00a0The Goddess<\/strong>‘ Five Year plan\u00a0pulled a sack over my head and\u00a0WHOA<\/em>,\u00a0here I am in Northland**.<\/p>\n

It’s nice and green and open\u00a0up here<\/a>.\u00a0The town<\/del>\u00a0city is small without being tiny or compact, it’s to be home to a Hundterwasser Museum<\/a>, and the overall vibe is of 1970s New Zild \u2014 unhurried\u00a0and\u00a0she’ll-be-right.<\/p>\n

It also seems\u00a0to have a bit of a rep. I was\u00a0puzzled and a little concerned\u00a0by people’s reactions to the announcement of our northward move. \u201cHow safe is it?\u201d asked a favoured\u00a0relation, which\u00a0I misunderstood to mean\u00a0the health and safety hazards inherent in a rural property. \u201cBetter have eyes in the back of your\u00a0head,\u201d a colleague emailed, with a link to\u00a0a recent sudden and violent death in the district.\u00a0And then there was the Mamea family reaction:<\/p>\n

\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

(into phone)<\/p>\n

We’re moving to Whangarei, Mother.<\/p>\n

WRITER’S MOTHER<\/p>\n

(V.O.; filter)<\/p>\n

To where?<\/p>\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

(into phone)<\/p>\n

Whangarei.<\/p>\n

WRITER’S MOTHER<\/p>\n

(V.O.; filter)<\/p>\n

... Whangarei is full of\u00a0Maoris, son.<\/p>\n

Beat.<\/p>\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

(into phone)<\/p>\n

You do know that more than half of your grandchildren are\u00a0part Maori?<\/p>\n

WRITER’S MOTHER<\/p>\n

(V.O.; filter)<\/p>\n

Yes, and every day I forgive their parents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I think we’re as safe here as we would be anywhere else in the world \u2014 safer, even, with our\u00a0natural barriers<\/a>.\u00a0The natives are friendly \u2014 more than they’ve a right to be since we’re\u00a0part of a wave of former Auckland residents increasing house and land prices \u2014 and there’s no sense of being judged on appearance.<\/p>\n

I like how fellow road users use\u00a0the two-second rule, obey the amber light, and merge like a zip.\u00a0I like how, in shops and businesses, people are sincere with their howdedo’s, and they sound genuinely\u00a0sorry for not stocking\u00a0an\u00a0item you’re after.\u00a0I like how winter in Whangarei town looks like a rugged outdoor clothing convention, where mud-encrusted gumboots or\u00a0jandals complete people’s ensembles.<\/p>\n

There’s something about our new town that I can’t quite pin down. It’s friendly but\u00a0not overbearingly so. It’s rural but not isolated. And there’s a shooting range\u00a0five kilometres<\/em>\u00a0down the road (and ’round the corner, even!)\u00a0from Fortress Mamea, a far, far cry from\u00a0Auckland where the ‘local’ range was 50 kilometres away.<\/p>\n

Why, yessir,\u00a0I could get to like this place.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* Driving through en route to Cape Reinga or Kerikeri doesn’t count.<\/p>\n

** Some dramatic licence there, obviously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would you believe that I’ve moved to a town that I first visited* only several months earlier? It feels like\u00a0The Goddess‘ Five Year plan\u00a0pulled a sack over my head and\u00a0WHOA,\u00a0here I am in Northland**. It’s nice and green and open\u00a0up here.\u00a0The town\u00a0city is small without being tiny or compact, it’s to be home to a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Whangarei”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[1047,287,1152],"class_list":["post-4349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","tag-fortress-mamea","tag-the-goddess","tag-whangarei"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4349"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4393,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions\/4393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}