The notion that you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy seems apt for Rob and Hiraani Logan, even after more than two decades in retirement beachside at Westshore.
In their 90s, and married for 72 years, they still talk fondly of the days at Pukekino, the land bought southwest of Hastings by Mr Logan's father, Frank, in 1912, and developed over the next half-century despite the advent of two world wars, the Hawke's Bay earthquake and the Great Depression.
"Well and truly in the back-blocks, dirt road all the way to Hastings and Napier," says Mrs Logan, not-quite a city girl and with a touch of country of her own.
The couple met in 1938 and married at The Grange in Haumoana, where she had lived, in September 1943 after his return, initially on "furlough" to use the war term - temporary leave in any other language.
She had by that time become used to Auckland, where she worked during World War II, and it was with some reluctance she agreed to move back to the Bay where Mr Logan had started work before the war, at the age of 16.
