Emma Williamson returned to Paremoremo, on the outskirts of rural Albany, with her husband Ray Nicholls and sons Louis, 13 and Patrick, 12, from London eight years ago. She tells Catherine Smith why the family loves living in the area.
We'd moved back from London and were looking at property all around here. I'd grown up here, my parents have farmed around Albany, Coatesville and Paremoremo for 37 years and they live just up the road.
We found this property but discovered it had been taken off the market because the [North Shore] council had bought it for a park. But three or four months later it came back on the market and now we'll have this park right next door.
The farm was covered in foliage so high you couldn't see the water, but now we can see the whole creek inlet, the Sky Tower and One Tree Hill right around to Whenuapai and the Waitakeres. We were determined to make this as low-maintenance as we could - I believe you plant once and plant well - so that we could enjoy this land.
Ray took some convincing - he travels a lot for work - but then he's got a tractor and a ride-on mower and a chainsaw and that's heaven for a man, so he's happy.
We share chickens with a neighbour, and get 10 eggs a day, every second day, and James Harrison keeps beehives here so we get 15kg of honey at the end of each season. I've planted fruit trees, another 20 went in this winter, plus citrus - we want to have fresh fruit every week of the year.
We'll have to move the vege garden because the rabbits and peacocks get stuck in, but Ray's good at shooting rabbits and we'll cook them.
In this area there are very few properties left to buy, because once people come here they hold on. There's a core of connected families, a real mix of ages, so people are committed to here, they're not moving away any time. That's what gives the community a lot of strength.
In the last two to three years we started Sustainable Pare and we won the ARC 2010 Best Sustainable Community Award. It starts with ourselves, what we're doing in our family, then our neighbours and the community, and the environment. Every month there's a meeting and people pick up on what they're interested in, it's not ramming anything down people's throats.
This winter it was about How To Watch a Bird, because we've done lots of planting to bring the birds back and now we're doing a bird-counting programme. For Pest Free Pare 60 families have been trapping possums and rats and this summer we noticed a vast difference in the birds. Others cleared their roadside of noxious weeds.
My friend Savannah and I do a garden club at the school, with vege gardens and composting, and an arbor day with fruit tree planting. You do the things you're interested in so nobody feels they have to do it. The boys ride their bikes to school or you can leave them at the bus stop to take the bus to Albany Junior High. The RidgeView school bike shed is full of bikes. When we lived in Epsom it was a disaster, kids getting run over outside the school. This is the smallest school on the North Shore and it's still the sort of place where a parent who sees the kids mucking round will stop and say "You shouldn't be on the roof of the bus shelter" and nobody minds. A village raising a child, it's still like that.
The Community Club is the scene for all the weddings and 21sts and 40ths, and there's a local band that gets used at all the functions and pot luck dinners. One girl started a youth club with her parents on Friday nights for the 13+ kids.
It's the sort of place where if something happens people will still drop off a stew or a plate of baking. People will jobshare - say swap firewood or a half a sheep for help to build the carport or fix the barn. The kids are down at the water, and catch flounder and sometimes even snapper from the kayak, and they've caught kingfish off the wharf. They've found eels and koura in the streams and sometimes even find kauri gum.
We have lots of friends come up from town who need to get away, so we spend the evening in front of the pizza oven or pool.
It's not the glamour of Coatesville. Albany's just over the hill but I go there as little as possible because I hate the mall. All I need is here, so I'll only go into town for special things like the museum or to visit friends.
Emma's picks
* Sanders Park, Sanders Rd
The park opens to the Paremoremo Creek and includes walking, mountain bike and equestrian tracks, a dog exercise area and open space for picnics. Locals also use the Paremoremo Scenic Reserve, accessible from Ridge Rd, Brookdale Rd, Elmore Rd.
* Paremoremo Wharf, Attwood Rd
A lovely spot to fish off and just watch the boats around the upper harbour.
* Sustainable Pare
This and other community ventures are all thoroughly covered in the delightful community website and newsletter, parepublisher.co.nz
