Opu¯nake offers more than capital
Scott and Monica Willson spent two whole days in O¯ pu¯ nake before they decided they wanted to raise a family there.
‘‘Before we’d even got back down to Wellington we had made an offer on this house,’’ Scott said.
The couple and their one-yearold son Avery made the big move from Wellington just under a month ago and they’re more than happy with their decision.
‘‘I’ve got to know more people here in the three weeks that we’ve been here than I would have ever known in my neighbourhood back home,’’ Monica said.
‘‘Which says a lot really.’’
The pair had decided they needed a change - they wanted to move out of Wellington, slow down and have more time together as a family.
‘‘We had a bit of a check list that I guess was guiding our decision,’’ Scott said.
The criteria included: housing affordability, something geographically interesting, and recreational activities for the pair now and Avery as he gets older.
‘‘So with all that criteria South Taranaki and Ota¯ go were the two regions that we could have done what we wanted to do in,’’ Scott said. ’’But then the Ota¯ go housing market went quiet and at the time we were looking and we came up here for the weekend and fell in love with it.’’
Family time was also a big concern for the pair.
‘‘Avery was getting older and I was looking at having to go back to work,’’ Monica said. ’’We’d be missing things in the evenings and we didn’t want to raise a family with only one of us there.’’
So they moved to O¯ pu¯ nake and started a business that enabled them to work from home and service anywhere in New Zealand.
‘‘We started a marketing web and design company, we called it Family Creative,’’ Scott said. ’’We’ll run it from here and we got our first client on our second day up here - the O¯ pu¯ nake Beach Carnival.’’
They don’t seem to be the only ones that South Taranaki has appealed to. ’’We used a conveyancing lawyer who doesn’t do a lot of work other than property, and she’s really small, she works from her basement basically,’’ Monica said. ’’When we were signing off the sale and purchase agreements for here she told us that they had, at that time four other couples from Wellington who had bought property in O¯ pu¯ nake or South Taranaki.’’