New Zealand’s Green Goddess Wendyl Nissen and her writer husband Paul Little are selling their Northland escape and heading back to Auckland.
Despite swearing that they would live out their lives on their waterfront two-hectare lifestyle block on 71 Waione Road just out of Opononi on the Hokianga Harbour, Nissen and Little have been pulled home to Auckland by their five kids and, more importantly, three grandchildren.
“We were in Auckland at a big family function and the kids ganged up on us and said ‘actually we do like you and like to see you’,” Little told OneRoof.
“So once we’d picked ourselves up of the floor, we starting thinking about it and realised it was probably the right time.”
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Nissen added: “We're both in our sixties. So it's really important to be there for the grandchildren. I don't want to miss out on that, our priority is being [in Auckland].”
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The couple who between them have edited the country’s biggest magazines including NZ Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, Cleo, Listener and Metro, written columns for the NZ Herald and published multiple books, had bought their country house in 2013 – earlier than they’d dreamed. A year later they sold their Grey Lynn house and moved permanently to the country – or so they thought.
“We weren't even expecting to move. We'd been up there once for a travel story and really, really liked it,” Little said.
“We had talked about one day we go and live somewhere in the country and happened to see the ad for this place and we went ‘oh my God, it's got everything’.”
The couple bought the lifestyle block at 71 Waione Road, in Opononi, in 2013 for $600,000. Photo / Supplied
The couple's creative corner looks out to the water. Photo / Supplied
Nissen added that the Waione Road property ticked everything on their dream country escape list: west facing for Little to watch the sunsets and clear night skies for stargazing, a beach at the bottom for swimmer Nissen, and the ‘eco stuff’ of a full orchard, windbreaks to protect the vege garden, and a decade old house that was already insulated with double glazing.
Through her columns, books and TV appearances Nissen had been extolling the good life while she lived in urban Grey Lynn, and even had a shop for her Green Goddess cleaning and lifestyle brand, so not surprisingly the former farm girl and boy dove into country life.
At one point they had 35 chickens and a huge vege garden while Little ran cattle (and dealt with the home kill).
“I love cows. They became my friends and I would play with them basically,” Nissen said. She could bottle and pickle to her heart's content, saying that decluttering her jars was one of the hardest jobs for the move out.
The house has relaxed, natural vibe, reflecting the couple's lives. Photo / Supplied
The beachfront property sits on 2.1ha. Photo / Supplied
These days the chickens have gone and Nissen has discovered roses do well in the Hokianga climate, converting the vege patch into a fragrant garden. The couple extended the decks, put in a concrete driveway and added a tiny house for visiting family to stay.
“It was just a great place to have friends, a really good place to entertain. Everyone was swimming just down the front and I used to do a lot of fishing as I had a boat. I always caught fish, always,” Nissen said.
The couple have planted some 5000 natives on the banks bordering their beach and added two 35,000-litre water tanks so that when the family crowd descends, they don’t run out.
"We feel we’re leaving it better than when we found it,” she said.
The one-bedroom main house had studies for the pair who mostly run their writing businesses from home (one is fitted as a radio studio) and a dramatic beamed ceiling put in by the former owner, an engineer.
“Paul wrote five books and I wrote five, so that's how serene it is. I wrote about my time there so I just feel like I've got a nice history already written about it for me."
More importantly, there was a two-bedroom flat for Nissen’s elderly parents. Her mum died six years ago, and it was her 91-year-old-dad who led the move back to the city last year.
The couple have a cottage in Point Chev to move back to, but plan to visit their friends in the north often.
"We're not the kind of people that really want to have empty houses. So that tells us that we need to let it go. It's too beautiful to be empty,” she said.
In their 11 years in the countryside, the couple have become huge promoters of the north west coast of Northland, raving about its clear night skies and plentiful fishing.
“New Zealanders really are drawn to the place,” they said.
With three houses on the property, it could be let as AirBnB, said Bayleys agent David Baguley as there is a shortage around the Hokianga area. He is bringing the property to auction on November 20 and is expecting most interest from Aucklanders. Records show they paid $600,000 for the home.
“The CV is $1.41m and we’re encouraging interest above $1m. Properties of this size don’t come up very often on the waterfront.
“The thing you get with the west coast is that you get a blue water harbour with the safety of an east coast beach, but for perhaps some half a million [dollars] less.”
- 71 Waione Road, in Opononi, Northland, goes to auction on November 20
