Sir Rob Fenwick’s Waiheke paradise goes up for sale
Sir Rob Fenwick’s Waiheke Island home has finally hit the market for sale after a delay of more than two years.
Jennie Fenwick, who prefers not to use her Lady title, told OneRoof earlier that plans to sell part of the couple’s holding at Te Makutu Peninsula after Sir Rob’s death in 2020 were stymied by Covid lockdowns and life.
But she felt now the time was right to pass on guardianship, or kaitiakitanga, of the 167-hectare estate.
“Rob always said to anyone he could speak to, that when you’re making decisions, you have to put the land’s needs ahead of your own,” Fenwick said.
“Now I have done all I can with it, I can’t improve it with the resources I have and to hold on to it isn’t in the [land’s] best interest. So it’s time.
“There is a desire on Waiheke Island to keep some land in big land blocks that can’t be subdivided, [to keep] those remnants and generating forest. That’s why Rob and I donated the 1.5km walkway on the boundary of that property, as we both think that you can’t care about the things you can’t experience.
“Like the marine reserves, people should have access.”
Fenwick said that with the help of a gardener, she has kept up with the pest eradication programme, alongside neighbours and the charitable trust Te Korowai o Waiheke.
There was even an application in the works with Save the Kiwi, Nga¯ti Paoa and Nga¯i Tai ki Ta¯maki to one day re-establish kiwi on the land.
New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty agent Pene Milne, who is selling the 167ha property by a tender closing March 6, said blocks of land of this size were hard to find on the island now.
“With an approximately 15ha block of pastoral land suitable for a myriad of uses, and stunning views, and to have that bush [approximately 152ha] as a legacy for the next generation. You get the lifestyle, and the benefit of all that stunning flora and fauna in your life,” she said.
Milne said the property, which has a CV of $4.2 million, had a building platform and a bore drilled for water.
“It’s about finding a new owner that wants to become the next generation of caretaker,” she said.
In an interview with OneRoof in August 2021, just as she was getting ready to sell before Auckland went into lockdown over an outbreak of Covid, Fenwick said Sir Rob had always talked about selling part of their holding at Te Makutu Peninsula.
Sir Rob, a celebrated environmentalist and businessman, died in March
2020 aged 68 after a five-year cancer fight.
Their land on Waiheke meant everything to him, she said, recalling the message he left on an answerphone 37 years ago in which he told her he had bought something special.
She was about three weeks away from giving birth, and Sir Rob had attended a mortgagee sale for a farm on the island. “Sorry darling, I’ve bought a farm,” he said in the message.
Fenwick told OneRoof in August
2021: “Having this love affair for the land really was where the seeds for his huge and ambitious schemes came from. It started on this land and then we tried to get the whole of New Zealand to join in.”
Fenwick said a mining company had wanted to purchase the farm for the manganese and chip on the peninsula, but they managed to.
Sir Rob was founder of the Living Earth composting business and the driving force behind the Predator Free 2050 movement.
Now, the land has beautiful native forest, hardly any rats, and birds not been seen there for decades.
“We’ve got weka, pa¯teke, banded rails, ka¯ka¯, ka¯ka¯riki, and we have heard and seen the New Zealand falcon, and we’ve got all the wading birds now in such a big, beautiful estuary.”