GO WITH THE GLOW
What happens when a supercity collides with a rural village Auckland’s tentacles have reached deep into the heart of its southernmost rural community, where some residents are feeling crowded. Kelly Dennett reports.
When Andrew Kirk and his partner Sheryl were househunting they inspected properties at midnight. With a three-page list of must-haves for their dream home, and a bemused real estate agent in tow, the selfdescribed Trekkies were looking for good elevation with little light pollution. And, they found it – at night on Pinnacle Hill Rd they could see the Milky Way, the seven stars that make up the Orion constellation, and Matariki.
Living in Manukau, South Auckland, at the time, Kirk, a keen stargazer, hoped for an optimum spot to use his telescope and portable tripod and so the pair headed south, just metres from the boundary line that separates the supercity from Waikato.
Nine years on, in the couple’s 3.5-acre block at 10.30pm in the middle of the week, amid the alpacas and pigs and sheep, the northern lights of Auckland city glow from behind a hill. They’ve always been there, the couple say.
But turn west-ward and there’s another glow that shines brighter than ever before – that’s neighbouring Pukekohe. Slowly gathering steam south-west are the lights of Po¯ keno.
The night sky, Kirk says, is becoming more and more light polluted. Worstcase scenario, as time goes on, rural residents could eventually be bathed in suburban-level light.
Bombay, essentially the most southern rural village in Auckland, was founded and named for the ship that came to New Zealand in 1865, and has long been a farming community with its roots embedded in crops (initially mostly potatoes), and dairying. Its earliest market growers were the Lum family, from Guangzhou, whose 70-acre Ah Lim Gardens were among the largest in Auckland at the time.
Four-year-old census data says in 2018 Bombay was a village of nearly 2000, an increase of 354 since 2013. But while the community spirit is very much small town, the prices take a leaf out of the supercity’s book.
According to CoreLogic, its 182 dwellings have a median value of $1.4 million, largely driven by the fact the homes sit on lifestyle blocks, many of them about 10 acres, carved from swathes of once-bare land. Here, prices have increased 55 per cent in four years – but there have been just 17 sales in the past year, with an average of two days on the market.
Although the council prevents intensive developments, more homes have cropped up, including a subdivision behind the local school with scores of homes. All around the small village intensification is happening – from the billion-dollar Mill Rd development in Drury, to allow for a population boom of 60,000 in the next 30 years, to Po¯ keno, five minutes south on the Waikato Expressway, a former sleepy village expected to hit 7000 residents in 15 years.
Locals who’ve been here decades remember when Great South Rd was the main thoroughfare in and out of Bombay, but the creation of the southern motorway interchange brought with it some modest business: a Georgie Pie later turned McDonald’s, a BP, an Autobahn restaurant and a fresh produce stall.
Last year the grassy site of a former mechanic was developed, and there stands now what any central suburb
would boast: a KFC, a Coffee Club, a sushi shop, and a dairy. Traffic roars all day long and an action group has been established to try to sort the complex intersection with Waka Kotahi.
Mortgage adviser Claire McArthur, Bombayian of three years, describes queues settling at the stop sign outside her home. Her once-quiet rural road now has, ‘‘people pouring through’’.
Typically, it’s motorists shunning the arterial routes for less clogged back roads out to SH2. But the extra vehicles are noticeable, and lead to a feeling among some that the place just doesn’t feel like it used to.
While new housing does pop up here, McArthur says it’s wider Franklin that’s booming. The rural district encompassing Bombay and neighbouring Pukekohe, Ramarama, Ararimu, and others are all about an hour from the city by train (from Pukekohe, slightly less from Papakura), and even longer in peak-hour traffic, but the agricultural epicentre has become highly sought after by families either priced out of the Auckland market, or who are seeking more bang for their buck.
Pukekohe in particular, 15 minutes down the road, is home to about 30,000 people and counting.
Many of McArthur’s clients are second-home buyers – they’ve leveraged off their first home, have a few kids, are looking for a bit of space and thanks to Auckland’s house prices, have a bit of money to spend. A ‘‘bottleneck of demand’’ for the very fringes of the south of Auckland saw one of her clients pay (a refundable) $5000 just to be on a waiting list for a house in Drury.
‘‘People are coming further and further south where ... you can still buy something for under $1m,’’ she says. ‘‘They’ve hit Drury, which has got too expensive, then Pukekohe, which has filled out, then they’re hitting Po¯ keno.’’
CoreLogic chief economist Kelvin Davidson says mapping reveals some areas very south of Auckland showing more value growth than central city and North Shore areas, but median property values can be quickly artificially inflated by crops of new builds. That said, investors and first-home buyers were also
likely recognising there was better value to be found outside central areas. ‘‘There definitely seems to be something going on in these southern suburbs.’’
‘‘People are coming further and further south where ... you can still buy something for under $1m. They’ve hit Drury, which has got too expensive, then Pukekohe, which has filled out, then they’re hitting Po¯keno.’’ Claire McArthur
The bonus for urban Aucklanders is that remote working has meant they’ve been able to look further afield than they usually would – and take advantage of the novelty of rural life. Not all the locals are thrilled about it. In 2010, Franklin residents raised concerns about being subsumed into the Auckland Council supercity with fears their unique lifestyles would be affected by city-living councillors (residents are now represented in that council by the Franklin Local Board. Its chair didn’t return phone calls).
One Bombay resident believes there is a quiet resentment towards the district’s newbies, and tells a story of panicky neighbours unnecessarily calling the fire service over a small bonfire. Another paints a picture of a mono-cultural village with a serious lack of diversity. A history book published on the area in 2015 gently mocks the complaints of recent arrivals that amounted to mud and dust on the roads, and noisy growers.
Farmers wrote of the fear of precious fertile land being overtaken by housing and the slowing of Bombay’s proud tradition of agriculture.
McArthur thinks Bombay residents will be quietly thrilled that they no longer have to trudge 25 minutes into Manukau to shop, plus the Franklin population boom is seeing the train line upgraded. ‘‘Certainly you don’t want to see apartment blocks, but I don’t think there’s any problem with more people moving into the area.’’
Long-time resident Antonella Hagspihl, though, is considering leaving because of increased traffic near her home and more businesses bringing with them a rolling stream of trucks, tiny homes, cranes and machinery.
Twenty years ago she and her husband, world travellers, settled in a Bombay where you’d barely see a car. Now she won’t so much as take her horses for a trot on the roads.
‘‘I think they’re coming from all over,’’ she says of recent arrivals.
‘‘I know people who live in [remote, coastal] Port Waikato and work in the city. People are more prepared to travel just to be able to get out. I think the progression will be that the people who live here move further out, and the people who lived in the city move here.
‘‘We still love it, but within the next five years, I think we will be moving. My husband doesn’t want to, we’ve put so much time and effort into the property, but it feels like you’re enclosed.’’
Grower John Sutherland, who has been in the district for more than 60 years, rubbishes the idea that growing land is at risk of being deleted by housing. In reality, he says, very few families are now making their primary income off their land, and few large acreages exist there. His sizeable green vegetable crops would be among them. Across Bombay, Ramarama and Pukekohe he grows on about 900 acres of land. He points out that those complaining about out-of-towners were likely to be hobby farmers themselves.
‘‘Everyone gets so precious about all this growing land going into housing, I just don’t buy into the argument,’’ he says. ‘‘There’s oodles of land in the country that are capable of doing exactly what we’re doing here. When you look at how many hectares a year are going into housing, it’s actually peanuts.’’
He says Three Waters legislation could have more of an impact on agriculture than housing and that bare land does not necessarily mean good growing conditions. Sutherland has been researching vertical and indoor farming and thinks that could be a far more productive venture.
‘‘I can see the congestion we’re getting in the last 10 years, but it’s... traffic from Pukekohe. The rest of the area – there’s a few more houses on the hill, but it hasn’t changed a lot.’’
Bombay School principal, Paul Petersen, says its roll is capped at 385, otherwise, ‘‘I am fairly sure that we could grow the roll by at least another 200’’. There is a waiting list for out-of-zone pupils to get in and Petersen says the school, which opened in 1965 with 150 pupils, is highly sought after not just because it’s rural but because it also has a good achievement record.
Petersen says ‘‘a fair few’’ parents are executives who travel in and out of Auckland city, but many are also lifestyle block owners, or small to medium business owners.
He points out that new subdivisions around them are producing homes valued at well over $1m and those that can afford that are likely to send their children to private schools in urban Auckland.
While areas around Bombay are booming, he says Bombay doesn’t have the infrastructure for highintensity housing, particularly in relation to water and sewage. Property sizes generally have to stay a certain size to deal with sewerage. He expects the school’s in-zone roll to remain stable as families move on from the area.
‘‘We are unlikely to grow unless something unpredicted happens to the land around the school. For example – if developers or council put in a town water supply and sewerage – then it’s game on.’’
After Andrew Kirk and Sheryl moved to Pinnacle Hill he’d initially spend nights in the paddock, rugged up in a jacket and beanie, scouring the sky. The land came from a neighbouring homekill business, and behind their home was a disused abattoir that had Kirk’s
wheels spinning. Over several months the abattoir was transformed.
Now, a ladder leads up to an elevated annex where a dome, second-hand and carted from an observatory in Tekapo, opens up the skies. A concrete-filled pier stabilises the heavy Italian mount and US telescopes (for those that are interested, a Celestron 11’’ EdgeHD SchmidtCassegrain and an Orion ED80CF triplet refractor which sits above it).
The scope, along with most other pieces of tech in the observatory, are computer-automated and there is a tool for everything – camera lenses, filters for looking at the sun, eye pieces, and a specialist astrophotography image processing application used by astrophotographers around the world, and possibly Nasa.
It’s here Kirk spends many of his nights. A bunk bed went in over his computer desk, and a small kitchenette hosts a tea kettle. Slippers are nearby and in winter a pig may wander in to sleep next to the heater. ‘‘It’s a fun hobby,’’ says Kirk. Admittedly, ‘‘it has been a bit expensive’.’
Kirk, a solutions architect by day, thinks that 50 years ago Bombay would have been a ‘bortle three’ sky – that is, a dark sky crowded with stars thanks to minimal light intrusion. Now, it’s bortle four – glow from cities can be seen and this in turn brightens clouds. Kirk fears it will reach 4.5 in a few years. For non stargazers, that’s a light level comparable to a suburb, with repercussions for being able to see the Milky Way on the horizon.
The couple are not complainers, but they see the irony in the city appearing to catch up with them. Sheryl in particular would like more land, though the prospect of moving, for Kirk in particular, is daunting. ‘‘It took quite a lot of effort to build this, I wouldn’t want to go through it again.’’