by Rob Morton

Our village at Awaawaroa Bay recently celebrated its 5th birthday.

Firstly for those who don't know anything about us, a bit of background. Most importantly, how do you pronounce that name? It's "Awa-awa-roa" (means “Long Valley”) and has been called this for many hundreds of years.

The land is on Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf about 15 miles east of Auckland, New Zealand. A wide variety of land types are present from steep hills, through rolling pasture to river flats. We have tidal estuary boundaries on the Bay. There is a beautiful wetland running through the middle of the valley with plentiful year round water, all spring fed. The climate is temperate/subtropical and we can grow good pipfruit at one extreme and bananas at the other.

Awaawaroa Bay Village - the land had been cleared by earlier farmers

We bought the land (420 acres/169 ha) from a farming family in 1995, who had owned it for 3 generations. Like all good hard working New Zealand farmers they had done their best to clear and graze it and you'd have to admit that they had done well! We have spent the last five years trying to undo all their hard work - getting rid of grazing animals, encouraging gorse and replanting native tree species (over 10,000 so far). They had left us about 30ha of good subtropical rain forest, thankfully.

A small group of us took the gamble five years ago and paid cash for the land, borrowing 100% of the money. Such was our faith and vision! We knew we'd soon attract enough people to repay our debt and do the development work. We proceeded with planning consent from the relevant local authorities to establish a 15 house village, based on principles of organic land use, conservation and repair of eco-systems, and community living ideas familiar to you all. Consent was granted and we proceeded with the work, initially road making to gain access to the land. How easy it all sounds, written down on paper! It was quite a drama and we went through three contractors.

A company structure was used in setting up the village. We are equal shareholders in a company that owns the land. We do not have individual title to our 1 hectare blocks and we do not even own our own houses. But a shareholding gives you an entitlement to 1ha and the right to build and lease a house on a 999 year lease. This structure has the advantage that we are not classified as a subdivision and so do not have to build major sealed roads through the village, saving us considerable expense. It also gives a cohesiveness to the community as we operate under Company by-laws. Decision making is easy with one share, one vote. (We haven't actually had to resort to this kind of decision making yet because we have a process of consensus in place for the everyday running of the community and for our monthly community member meetings.)

This structure has been helpful in sorting through prospective applicants too. It immediately puts many people off and we believe it leaves us with only the more community-spirited types moving through into the selection process. We make it clear that there is very little chance of a capital gain from involvement at Awaawaroa. It takes 100% approval among shareholders before we would be able to sell our now very valuable piece of land and all retire to the Australian Gold Coast. I, for one, am staying put.!

Well, five years later we still haven't sold all the shares! We've sold 11 and still have 4 to go. But we're almost out of debt, we've got a great bunch of people and this place is really starting to feel like home.

The initial share price was NZ$46,000, giving you your 1ha to live and work on, plus access to and joint ownership of all communal facilities — land and buildings, tractor, etc., and this included a road and telephone line. The share price is now $68,000, the increase being purely interest incurred on the original share price. Ouch! We've agreed to freeze the price at $68,000 as we are attempting to attract a wide range of people, not just rich ones.

Four families live here permanently and the other seven have buildings of one sort or another under various stages of construction. We have gardens, orchards and shelter belts established, and every year we plant 2000 native trees as revegetation on the land. Four of us have planted sustainable timber plantations, using cypruses, acacias and eucalypts. For these forestry projects we lease land off the Company, and have adopted a system based on Crystal Waters' land use policy. We will pay 10% of timber proceeds back to the company at harvest.

My partner Hanne and I have a flourishing plant nursery operating out of the Village. Enterprises such as this are individual projects rather than community ones. There is enough community work to do in the way of maintenance, planting, fencing, building etc. without communal income projects, in our opinion. Like any community we have those who work hard and often and those who do very little for one reason or another. This causes resentment and we've tried to reduce the opportunity for this resentment and hence our money making ventures are our own.

The first community building - a multi-purpose shed

A community hall was always going to be our first priority on the land, to give the village a focus. But the slow sale of shares has meant that available money has gone to more pressing financial needs such as mortgage repayment and road building. Our meetings (monthly) and meals (weekly) have been held in peoples' houses. But now we have built our first community building — a tractor shed/workshop/party space sort of structure. Here we recently celebrated our 5th birthday with a band and heaps of people. It seems likely we'll have paid off our mortgage early this year and then money from the last two shares can be used for a real community building.

So looking back over 5 years, I don't think we've got many regrets. We live on peacocks eggs out here! It's very close to paradise.

It feels as though we have the opportunity and power to plan our future together here at Awaawaroa. This is increasingly difficult these days I feel. We hope to send you a similarly optimistic report in another five years time.

All the best from the people at Awaawaroa.

Rob Morton,
Awaawaroa Bay Eco-Village,
Awaroa Road, R.D.1, Waiheke Island,
New Zealand.
Tel:(64-9)-372-6586
E-mail: simon@sdg.pl.net
website: http://www.pl.net/~simong