Sir Rob Fenwick’s Waiheke Island home has finally hit the market for sale after a delay of more than two years.
Jennie Fenwick, who has prefers not to use her Lady title, told OneRoof earlier that plans to sell part of the couple’s holding at Te Matuku Peninsula after Sir Rob’s death in 2020 were stymied by Covid lockdowns and life.
But she felt now the time was right to pass on guardianship, or kaitiakitanga, of the 167-hectare estate.
“Rob always said to anyone he could speak to, that when you’re making decisions, you have to put the land’s needs ahead of your own,” Fenwick said.
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“Now I have done all I can with it, I can’t improve it with the resources I have and to hold on to it isn’t in the [land’s] best interest. So it’s time.”
She added: “There is a desire on Waiheke Island to keep some land in big land blocks that can’t be subdivided, [to keep] those remnants and generating forest.
“That’s why Rob and I donated the 1.5km walkway on the boundary of that property, as we both think that you can’t care about the things you can’t experience.
“Like the marine reserves, people should have access.”
Jennie Fenwick at her home on Waiheke Island. She is selling off part of Te Makutu Peninsula. Photo / Michael Craig
402 Orapiu Road, on Waiheke Island, is for sale by way of tender, closing March 6. Photo / Supplied
Fenwick said that with the help of a gardener, she has kept up with the pest eradication programme, alongside neighbours and the charitable trust Te Korowai o Waiheke.
There was even an application in the works with Save the Kiwi, Ngāti Paoa and Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki to one day re-establish kiwi on the land.
New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty agent Pene Milne, who is selling the 167ha property by a tender closing March 6, said that blocks of land of this size were very hard to find on the island now.
“With an approximately 15ha block of pastoral land suitable for a myriad of uses, and stunning views, and to have that bush [approximately 152ha] as a legacy for the next generation. You get the lifestyle, and the benefit of all that stunning flora and fauna in your life,” she said.
Milne said that the property, which has a CV of $4.2 million, had a building platform and a bore had been drilled for water.
“It’s about finding a new owner that wants to become the next generation of caretaker,” she said.
In an interview with OneRoof in August 2021, just as she was getting ready to sell before Auckland went into lockdown over an outbreak of Covid, Fenwick said that Sir Rob had always talked about selling part of their holding at Te Matuku Peninsula.
Sir Rob, a celebrated environmentalist and businessman, died in March 2020 aged 68 after a five-year fight against cancer.
Their land on Waiheke meant everything to him, she said, recalling the message he left on an answerphone 37 years ago in which he told her he had bought something special.
Sir Rob and Jennie Fenwick on Waiheke. Photo / Supplied
Sir Rob with a kiwi that was named after him. He dedicated his life to eradicating pests that endangered New Zealand’s native wildlife. Photo / Supplied
She was about three weeks away from giving birth, and Sir Rob had attended a mortgagee sale for a farm on the island. “Sorry darling, I’ve bought a farm,” he said in the message.
Fenwick told OneRoof in August 2021: “Having this love affair for the land really was where the seeds for his huge and ambitious schemes came from – it started on this land and then we tried to get the whole of New Zealand to join in.”
Prior to buying the land, a farm in three titles, she and Sir Rob owned a small piece of land next door where they used to camp, but with no road access they got there by boat.
“We used to leave from Maraetai. We had a Great Dane, a Labrador and a German Shepherd between us and then the first baby came and she was three months old when we found out there was another one on the way, so I’d have a baby in a front pack and the three dogs and Rob, and Rob’s oldest daughter often.”
Sir Rob died in 2020 after a five-year fight against cancer. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Fenwick said that a mining company had wanted to purchase the farm for the manganese and chip that run through the peninsula.
“By weird coincidence that company had been purchased by a larger company the week of the auction and they had banned all capital purchases until a restructure had been done so the mining company that was there intending to buy was hamstrung by that – and Rob bought it.”
Sir Rob, who was founder of the Living Earth composting business and the driving force behind the Predator Free 2050 movement, set about putting everything right as fast as he could, Fenwick said in 2021, but getting the stock out of the forest took a lot longer than planned – “the last pigs are just coming out now”.
Now, the land has beautiful native forest, hardly any rats and many bird species which have not been seen there for probably 80 years.
“We’ve got weka, pateke, banded rails, kaka, kakariki, and we have spotted and we’ve heard and seen the New Zealand falcon, and we’ve got all the wading birds now in such a big, beautiful estuary.”
- 402 Orapiu Road, on Waiheke Island, is for sale by way of tender, closing March 6
