KEY POINTS:
Dylan Thomas, prodigious poet and drinker, famously wrote "Old age should burn and rave at close of day/Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Swapping the family home for a yacht or live-in job abroad probably wasn't what he had in mind, but his impulse to lustily defy a sedate slip towards a whimpering exit is shared by modern mid-lifers who are redefining the OE tradition.
Call it the Under the Tuscan Sun effect, mixed with a dash of Shirley Valentine. People in their 40s, 50s and 60s, inspired by friends' stories or TV shows, are selling up and heading overseas, not as package tours, but to live and work for months or years.
It's sundowners at sunset rather than nervous contemplation of their sunset years; summers in Provence rather than the provinces; and tending the grounds of an English mansion rather than the back lawn.
"There's enough anecdotal evidence to show there's a trend," says Barbara Myers, from Auckland University of Technology's business faculty. Myers is about to start researching the phenomenon, which she sees as linked to a unique demographic situation.
"For the first time in history, you've got a group of people who are going to live longer and have to work longer. This is the first generation, particularly of women, who have choices in their 50s and 60s."
Almost one in five men, and one in 10 women aged 65 or over are in the paid workforce.
At the age at which their parents were probably planning for retirement and scaling back their work lives, many New Zealanders are facing another 15 to 20 years in paid employment and having to figure out how they'll manage financially post-retirement.
Some are shunning the stability, status and identity of their jobs, in favour of a search for adventure and pause for thought.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests it's about taking a career break, but also taking a break to evaluate where their life's going next," says Myers.
Her research will examine what people do on senior OEs, the impact on their career and life, and wider implications for the job market here. "I see a tension: we have a workplace which is saying we need to keep older people in employment, then we've got some people disconnecting their lives from that."
Wellington career coach Cassandra Gaisford wonders if a wisdom drain is quietly happening already.
"We've been focusing on youth, which is a declining market, and maybe not focusing enough on who are going to be the core of our workforce, who are bailing out."
Gaisford has a book due out shortly called Happy @ Work, about finding career fulfilment in the middle years. She guesses as many as 70 per cent of people in this age group dream of an OE, and with the slew of "downsize your life" programmes, more are working out ways to fund it.
MARGARET AND Fred Gillies have sold their household contents, rented out their Puhoi lifestyle block and rehoused their pets. In five weeks, they'll be in England, in a new fifth wheeler - state-of-the-art mobile home - feeding their wanderlust.
At 58 and 59 respectively, after two years of planning and saving, they're about to spend 14 months on the road in Britain and Europe, working as and when needed.
For Fred, a trucker and former farmer, the epiphany came during a long haul a few years ago. "I was driving along thinking, there's got to be more to life than this. I'm nearly 60, I don't want to be seeing my life out doing this."
Says Margaret: "We've got ourselves established, got our mortgage paid off, our children are off our hands. We've had a lifetime working."
Fred: "We want to reap the benefits of it now."
They see a proliferation of travel shows and the internet driving a wave of older travel.
"This generation's a bit more content to take a few risks," says Margaret.
Rosemary and Bob Clarkson spent 15 years saving for their four-year yachting voyage around the Pacific Islands and Australia.
In 2004, the couple, who both worked in administration for Otago University, rented out their Dunedin home, bought an 11m sloop called Westwind2 and set sail. They were in their late 50s.
"If we waited until we were 65 when we could officially retire, who knows, our bodies might have broken down by then," says Rosemary. "We were healthy and fit."
There were barbecues on beaches, sundowners on new friends' yachts, a succession of tropical islands.
"For the first few months you're counting every penny, thinking I had a really good job and salary," recalls Rosemary. "But in the end it doesn't matter."
Neither the Clarksons nor the Gillies have grandchildren yet. But Aucklander Marie Stanaway is experiencing the tug of the next generation.
Stanaway is weathering her first winter in seven years, after spending a run of northern summers in Britain doing live-in care work for the wealthy elderly. She normally rents out her apartment while she's away, but this year she's staying at home to spend time with her grandchildren.
The former real estate agent and small business owner lasted only a year in retirement before launching her OE.
"I thought, life's passing me by. I'm too young for retirement!"
She left for England on an ancestry visa, travelling with a girlfriend. One season she spent looking after a 93-year-old Lady who lived in Park Lane. "All of a sudden she said, 'We're off to France to my summer home' - a massive old monastery built in 1643."
She has seven or eight close friends in England, all Kiwi ex-pats in their 50s and 60s doing the same thing.
"You do need support. You get the down times - lugging your baggage through the tube.
"Not everyone can do it."
But the pay-offs are rich: she's travelled widely, earned good money, broadened her outlook and sense of the possible.
"It's changed me immensely and I can't wait to go back."
FIGURES COLLECTED from departure forms are the closest we have to statistics on the senior OE. There's no "OE" option for the section on purpose of travel, but the assumption is that most OEers would tick either visiting friends and relatives or holiday. The longest duration option is 29 days or more.
The largest group of people - 44 per cent - who departed for Britain in 2007 in these categories were not 20-somethings but those aged 50 to 69. The 20 to 29 age group comprised only 10 per cent of such departures for Britain; those aged 30 to 39 another 12 per cent. For departures to all countries, the situation reversed, with 20- to 29-year-olds accounting for one in five departures.
But the older age groups were still getting around, with 50-somethings accounting for 14 per cent and 60-somethings 13 per cent.
Some older people manage to continue in their professions overseas, though it seems more difficult to advance your career abroad at this age. Global Careers Link is a major international recruitment firm in the fields of banking, finance, engineering, IT, human resources, marketing and communications.
CEO Simon Swallow says older workers in Britain need to be prepared to take a couple of steps backward in order to get British experience. In some sectors, such as banking, Hong Kong or Singapore offer better prospects for senior roles than does Britain.
What about your career prospects on return? John and Catharine Langman met with both positive and negative reactions when they were job-hunting after returning from a year-long OE in their mid-50s.
John, who now works for a government department, says, "I don't think having done [the OE] really influenced an employment decision, other than it took you out of the market for a period."
The couple's OE began with three months working on a cattle station in the Australian outback (he was a stationhand, she was a cook). One of John's first jobs was bulldozing the airstrip so it met regulations.
Then they followed a common job-route for middle-aged married New Zealand couples in Britain, and found live-in work on a wealthy family's expansive estate.
Their employers, a retired merchant banker and his family, lived in Essex, with Rod Stewart and the Beckhams for neighbours.
The family's Edwardian-styled house was brand new and set on 11ha, which included a woodlot, pool and formal gardens.
John was groundsman, Catharine worked in the house.
Australasians benefit from British class pretensions, says John, as long as they learn their place.
"As Kiwis, the difficulty we found is because our employers were so polite, you kind of think you're friends with them, but you're not.
"You're staff, and you don't make friends with them.
"Rich people with children don't mind having Australasians as staff, because even if their children pick up a bit of Australasian accent or vernacular, that's much better than a low-class English accent. It's OK, because it indicates 'we can have colonials working for us."'
Like their younger counterparts, senior OEers can take some time readjusting to life in New Zealand, and often return changed.
Back in New Zealand for seven months, the Clarksons' values have shifted for good.
"You find a lot of things that society says you need, you don't need," says Rosemary. "We've got all this stuff in storage, and we know that most of it is not necessary."
The couple are still restless. "We don't want to become mainstream again, but we haven't decided how we're going to do it.
"Having made the break once and realising you're not going to drop dead, you just have to do things differently."
* Tips for older nomads
If you have property, consider renting it out rather than selling, or downsize to free up cash and rent out the smaller property.
Superannuitants should notify Work and Income of their travel plans. You'll general receive full payments as long as you're back within 26 weeks. For longer periods, you must apply for ongoing payments before you leave. You will receive 50 per cent or more, depending your new country and circumstances.
If you're seeking professional work in Britain, be prepared to take anything in your field to get a foot in the door. London is notoriously ageist, so consider other centres, such as Manchester or Edinburgh.
If you're seeking live-in service work, take several written character references from people prepared to vouch for your integrity.
Contact recruitment agencies for advice specific to your field before you go, but remember most people arrive without a job lined up.
If you want to get to know the locals in England, bear in mind they're more likely to be at the pub after dinner than straight after work.
