Dialogue: Retirement move could be mistake

With time on my hands for a change, I took it into my head at the weekend to fly down to Christchurch to spend a few days with my brother and sister-in-law and their increasing family, including a 14-month-old grand-nephew whom I hadn't yet met.

It is three and a half years since I've been "home," as it were, for I am a Mainlander born and bred and became part of the drift to the North in the late 60s and early 70s, arriving at this terminus for tens of thousands in 1971.

And here, apart from four years in Australia, I have stayed. But, strangely enough, I have never felt quite at home in this sprawling metropolis.

Particularly has this been true of the past 10 years or so as the population explosion, the traffic congestion, the pollution and the pace and pressures of life have accelerated alarmingly.

Auckland seems to have degenerated into a great, soulless, pulsing organism devoted solely to appeasing the great god Profit, sacrificing things like good citizenship, community pride and neighbourliness to it along the way.

So now, with retirement only a matter of years away, my wife (also a Mainlander, a West Coaster no less) and I have begun to turn our minds to where we might settle when that time comes.

We both have a hankering to return to the Mainland, although neither of us has any desire to go back to our home towns, if for no other reason than their climates would either freeze us to death or drown us.

But Christchurch has its appeal, mainly because we both have family there and the older you get, the more important family seems to become.

The climate, we tell ourselves, isn't all that bad, although after decades in the North it would take time to get used to the bitter winter cold; it has all the facilities of a major city yet (so far) few of the drawbacks; and in the South Island scheme of things, it's right in the middle.

Thus, when I left for Christchurch I had resolved to have a good look around, suss out the property prices and see whether the Garden City still had that human ambience for which we remembered it. Is this, given that it's a year or so off yet, the place to which we might retire?

And have a good look around I did, even taking a gondola ride to the summit of the Port Hills, which was a magical experience. The 360-degree view stretches from the Southern Alps in one direction to the port of Lyttelton and its beautiful harbour in the other.

I returned to Auckland with mixed feelings, for I detected in Christchurch a city under stress - not nearly the stress that Auckland is under, but stress nevertheless.

In downtown Christchurch, that retail and business area that radiates from Cathedral Square and makes Auckland's Queen St and environs look like a badly maintained public toilet, there are numerous empty shops.

The reason is found in the suburbs, where retail malls, all with their hectares of asphalt carparks, are being built all over the place.

Traffic has increased markedly and arterials such as Papanui, Riccarton and Ferry Rds and Memorial Ave are to be avoided at peak hours.

I am happy to report, however, that the human ambience is intact. When it comes to the people, one could almost imagine oneself in another country.

Service with a smile, friendliness and neighbourliness aren't things South Islanders have to be taught. They always have, and still do, come naturally.

On the flight home I began to ask myself a question which must confront many of us as we face up to what to do and where to go in retirement: is it a good idea to go anywhere?

As Tauranga is the Mecca for the retired in the North Island, so Nelson is in the South, yet I know of numerous couples who have left family and friends and gone to one or the other, only to return to where they came from, some in less than a year.

They just haven't been able to fit in, to adapt to their new surroundings. But most of all, they have pined for their families and friends. And just as the older you get the more important family seems to become, the same applies to friends.

So is it a good idea to leave what we know for something we once knew or think we will get to know? Or is it perhaps better to stay put, to continue to grow where we've been transplanted in the company of those who have grown along with us?

Fortunately, we still have a few years to try to untangle this conundrum.

garth_george@herald.co.nz