KEY POINTS:
To get to Provence, drive towards Whangarei and turn left at Brynderwyn. The petrol station, not the hills. Drive for another half-hour until you reach Matakohe, famous for its Kauri museum.
Some kilometres further on you'll find the signs for Linda and Guy Bucchi's homage to the South of France.
Driving into this modern farmhouse, set high on a ridge where the hills run down to the scrub and grey waters of the Kaipara, you will have a welcoming committee of one, if he can be bothered rousing himself from the sunniest spot on the veranda: Loopy, the large, grey, indeterminate house dog. He may even open an eye, and startle with the cornflower blue that betrays some husky, though what a husky was doing in a village near Avignon some years ago is one of those mysteries of the canine world.
The surprises continue inside. Furniture, furnishings, colours, textiles, pictures, ornaments: all bear the unmistakable imprint of the Midi.
Unpacked, freshened, and on to refreshments in the vast dining room that seems to take up half the house. Vast, as in a dining table that can comfortably feed, water, wine and cheese 12 appetites is swallowed up in a corner. Linda suggests wine and cakes. Guy: "Wine? Perhaps ... pastis?" Perhaps. We are, after all, in Petit Provence.
Linda brings antipasti, or what would be antipasti if we were on the other side of the Riviera border. She introduces the party - we are eight, tonight, all Kiwi - and tells how a small, smiling Tongan and a still-strapping former league international fetched up in this neck of the bush.
The Bucchi name is Italian. Guy's family left their homeland during that unfortunate business with Signor Mussolini; he was born and brought up in Provence, regards himself as French. Well, as much as any Provencal regards himself as French.
Linda was on her OE. That was the early 70s; they ran a bed-and-breakfast in the tiny village of Entraigues, outside Avignon near Carpentras, from 1975-2001. Raised three sons, now grown. Came home to nurse her mother in her final illness.
Their place gained a reputation with visiting Kiwis and Aussies; two of their guests are here tonight with fond memories of their holidays, warm anticipation for Linda's cooking ...
Aah, her cooking. The happy accident of French-Italian in-laws who taught her to prepare Mediterranean cuisine; the Tongan mother, from whom she inherited the art of Polynesian cooking; from both cultures, the importance of hospitality.
While she busies herself in the kitchen, Guy builds our appetite with a walk around the veges we'll eat later: garlic, shallots, potatoes, tomatoes. Unsprayed, of course, and fringed with high-rush fences a la Provence.
And in the large shed next to it, another surprise. Guy is an artisan iron-furniture maker. His one-off pieces have been accepted for an international expo in Sydney, there is talk of taking them to Milan. Not in New Zealand though: local tastes and galleries want plain, industrial products.
Dinner. Linda will say that she doesn't cook restaurant-style food, it's family cooking using fresh produce. If your family happens to come from two traditions separated by 20,000km and united by a fondness for bringing friends, strangers together to eat, drink, converse, laugh.
Raw fish and coconut ceviche; cockles and pipi that she's gathered from Tinopai, the village just down the road. Tuatua soup and - because this is a special occasion, and they require a permit - rare, precious toheroa from Dargaville. It has been decades since some of the Kiwis here have seen them on the plates and they relish the privilege.
Guy's courgettes add to the flavour of a huge platter of pissaladiere, the oniony, anchovied Southern French version of pizza, as we move to the meat courses. Spicy sausages, one of the culinary arts that New Zealand charcutiers are perfecting; and the centrepiece, a daube of home-killed beef; hearty stuff, and heartier thanks to a bottle of grunty red that saw the light of day on a hillside a long way from the Kaipara. Aubergine. Courgettes. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Spinach. They saw the light of day on the hill outside.
It may be seven courses, it may be nine, we are past caring or counting. Dessert? The classic iles flottantes, meringues floating on soft custard, with strawberries and raspberries.
And because we are in France, or believe we are by now, cheese. From there and here: soft, pungent morbier; stroppy, nutty conte from the north of France; creamy havarti from a few miles down the road. With quince and feijoa pastes from Linda's fruit.
Guy takes me to the bookcase and shows me his collection of rare books - the oldest from 1643. "Can you guess how old this is?" he asks, showing me an imprint reading, in archaic French, "the third year of the new era". "That would be 1795, three years after ... " another little bit of historical unpleasantness.
Breakfast is light. In the French manner. Coffee. Rolls. Jam. We drive a few decades down the road into the 60s, and a stroll around Tinopai. To Matakohe's remarkable Kauri Museum, the century-old village surrounding it looking as neat and trim as it never did.
It seems a world from Parnell, or Ponsonby. But just down the road from a little corner of Provence.
Petit Provence is at 703c Tinopai Rd, Matakohe, two hours' drive from Auckland. Phone (09) 431 7552 or see www.petiteprovence.co.nz. Rates (including continental breakfast): double $145, single $100. Evening meals available by arrangement at $40 a person (wine not included).
