WHO DARES WINS

A holiday gamble paid dividends for this British couple, writes ROBYN WELSH.

Susan and Peter Pritchett’s holidays are either all or nothing. When they returned to Britain following their first holiday here in 2005, they left $2000 lighter with a deal to buy this land.

They’d shaken hands with the local farmer who couldn’t subdivide his land until he’d found the money to finish fencing the covenanted native bush. Susan and Peter loved the outlook across that bush so much, they wrote out a $2000 cheque for fencing and agreed to buy one subdivided site on completion.

“We call it our $2000 gamble,” says Susan. “We may never have seen him again but we liked him.”

Two years later the farmer contacted them and they bought both 2ha blocks. In 2011 they sold the lower site, keeping the top site for this home. It flagged the latest chapter in their habit of shifting homes.

“That’s nine houses in Britain and this one, our first in New Zealand,” says Susan, of their move here in 2014.

“We said we’d have 10 years here and we’ve done everything we wanted in nine. There's room in our lives for one more adventure.”

“We are serial house movers. We don’t believe in the forever home.”

First up, they had to ask their farmer to retrieve his upside down tractor that had landed in a tree halfway down the slope. That done, they set up their bunk room cabin that was their home for seven months while the one-bedroom minor dwelling was being built.

Susan was on her own for eight weeks while Peter, an executive business coach, was back in the UK.

“The neighbours didn’t give me very long. They were amazed I stuck it out. I said ‘I’m British, I’ll be fine’.”

Sadly, their designer/builder Wayne Papprill, died before the completion of the 2016 main house with its north and east views. “We wanted a character home because it’s a very special site,” Susan says.

“We wanted the house to look as if it had been here for a while, not something that had just landed here.”

Their three-storey home has a lift from the ground floor garage to top floor living areas with 360 degree views that take in the Hauraki Gulf.

All four mid-level bedrooms have tiled ensuites. Three of the bedrooms have decks; the fourth has separate access via a courtyard. Another must-have here is the laundry close to the bedrooms.

European timber laminate floors and Italian tiles lend a timeless, rather than traditional, quality to the house. “Our style is more British. We care about function,” Susan says.

Barfoot & Thompson’s Vi Davidson says, “The owners have been fastidious in creating this symphony of style proudly positioned on the highest point in the area.”

Susan and Peter’s commitment to Puhoi includes planting thousands of native trees through bush tracks to bring birdlife back to this former gorse-covered land.

In autumn, they planted their last tree. “We said we’d have 10 years here and we’ve done everything we wanted in nine,” Susan says.

Now they’ve discovered Oamaru and, aged in their mid60s, they’re fearless about taking on a small farm with a villa renovation. “There's room in our lives for one more adventure,” Susan says.

Sale: Auction, August 25 Contact: Vi Davidson, Barfoot & Thompson, 021 110 4362