“If these walls could talk”
THE STORY OF WAIMA LODGE

Perhaps this is what they might say…

“I am a dream house. My name is Waima Lodge, I was built in 1920 by my first owners, Maurice and Sarah Kelly. They were inspired to live at the foot of the Waima Tuhirangi range, my owner wanted my roofline to reflect those lofty, beautiful, multi pitched ridges that preside over the valley where I stand. I believe that I was designed by the famous colonial architects, Cresswell and Trewithic, in Auckland city. My heart is made of kauri and Totara from that same ancient forest. No house was made from finer materials. I know this because Maurice was the son and grandson of timber merchants. As a merchant himself he could afford to lavish the best on his beautiful Sarah (of whom he was very proud). Sarah was a real Ariki, the Great Grand daughter of Eru Patuone who signed
the Treaty.

I have many stories to tell and I have seen many changes in my 90 years.
I am now a grand old lady with strong bones and elegant features.

I was very happy in my early years providing comfort and shelter both physical and spiritual to my lovely family. There was Maurice and Sarah, their children (though adults) were Arthur, Paikea, Inez, Marjory, and Audrey. I presided over all their weddings standing proudly behind many family portraits.
Many important people, leaders, chiefs, politicians, artists and musicians from all parts of the world came to eat in my formal dining room the sumptuous meals that Sarah prepared for them with produce from her famously diverse garden.

The 1930’s were a wonderful time for us all, the adults and their spouses lived in my 4 bedrooms. The cook and the gardener lived in my little cottage and helped Sarah with all her activities.

During the summer all my windows were opened to let the cool breeze waft through my rooms, the front door held open by the large greenstone adze that Mr. J Webster gave me. In the winter my beautiful brick fire places crackled with the heat of the fires that warmed my heart.

Every Sunday a gentleman dressed in black with a white collar came to minister his faith with the local people who would congregate in my lounge hopefully hanging on his every word. Afterwards the children who came eagerly ate the delicious smelling baking that Sarah offered them.

Once I remember an airplane flew low and loudly overhead. Several weeks later a photograph came with the postman, it was a picture of me taken from high above where the hawks fly! That picture still hangs in my lobby today.

Through all this time the Waima River flowed past my garden toward the Hokianga Harbour and the Tasman Sea, such a constant and interesting companion to me, whispering stories of where she came from and where she was going.

Time wore on and my beloved Maurice and Sarah, Geoff and Inez, passed away and other people came to me for shelter, they worked in my garden and lived in my rooms, unaware of my proud beginnings. I began to show my age and I began to worry that the rain and the rats that gnawed away would get the better of me.

In 2005 when Julie & Harmen first met me I was feeling very depressed and I was terribly shocked when they started to pull out my windows and doors. When they replaced them I began to feel a great deal better and after a coat of my original colour I began to look like my old self again. All my interiors were redecorated, my bathrooms and kitchen were modernized and I felt positively grand once more. What it is to be loved!

I have rewarded their family, friends and their many local and international guests with the level of comfort and security that I once did for my first family and to a level that Julie and Harmen had never experienced before.

Unfortunately the time came for Harmen and Julie to move on, they told me that they are seeking a new family to live with me.
I hope that my new owners will care for me as Julie and Harmen have done and enjoy the life that I know I can provide for them. The air that wafts through my rooms in the summer, the water that runs so plentifully is still as clear and pure as it was all those years ago.

One year ago my new owners came to live with me.
How fortunate can an old house be? Patu and Erina Hohepa have returned to their turangawaiwai, Dr. Patu, Jimmy Hop’s younger brother was born in the house that I can see just over the next paddock next door. He even wrote a book in which he mentions me with my old family in its pages.
Patu and Erina have an extended whanau in the Waima Valley so at last my rooms are again reverberating with the happy activity of my new family. Erina bought me a brand new roof which Harmen and Julie could not afford so now I will be able to keep dry and secure for a further century or so.

I believe that I am now in the hands of those who truly belong here, who’s children will continue to appreciate and care for me.


Harmen Hielkema & Julie Holton, June 2011

Old survey maps of the Whakatere Manawakaiaia Block featuring the Waima house and Kellys'old store

 

1939 survey map featuring house and out buildings.

Below map of Kelly Store site drawn earlier in 1924

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The Waima House & Garden

Maurice Claude Kelly 1872-1962

The Waima House (built 1920)

“The house, although he would never admit, even to himself, was the realisation of his dreams. With the drain on his pocket of putting his children through school and university, although they lived comfortably, Maurice had no chance to build up a cash reserve. Now with the children’s schooling completed, Maurice was going to build the house which would state to all Hokianga, his financial soundness and his rightful place in the community.
It would state to all his cousins and inlaws in the south that he was not just “poor Mossie” who had made an unfortunate marriage, but Maurice who with Sarah had produced a family accepted and respected in the county, and now they would be installed in a house superior to the ones possessed by those he would have called “The Auckland Gang.”

It would have a large, a very large sitting room, richly furnished, it would have a large and comfortable kitchen, with all the gadgets and fittings that Sarah could desire, it would have at least four bedrooms. It would have a dining room where he could display to his friends Sarah’s cooking talents and would have an entrance, imposing and spacious…….It had all those things! It also had large lawns, surrounding flower gardens, ample vegetable gardens and orchards stocked with apples, pears plums, peaches and quinces, subtropical fruits, citrus of all kinds, grape vines, and a host of small fruits. It must be emphasised that every plant and tree was the result of Sarah’s work alone, as Maurice was completely useless as a gardener.

Above all, this house would be made of the most superior materials, Kauri for the framing & floors, Rimu for the joinery and trims, Totara for the cladding, and all the plumbing and kitchen fittings would be of the finest quality…..And they were !”



Sarah Kelly 1884-1967 (Great grand daughter of Eru Patuone)

“Her housekeeping skills were legendary. She made all the clothes for her children and herself, her baking of all pastries, cakes, pies, puddings and all things good to eat, was beyond compare, although it is recorded by her daughters that her own high standards did not extend to passing on her knowledge, impatience at their incompetence and stupidity would usually end with her snatching away the task involved and doing it herself. Sometimes when her impatience with Maurice was stretched a little too far she would proceed to address him by his second name Claude, which she knew he hated and was secretly ashamed of, because he thought it was “sissy”

She also, when I knew her, had gardens of about an acre. The vegetable garden took up the major part, and in full summer at the house in Waima, one descended the back steps, down the path between the grapevines dripping with fruit, through the back gate and into the vegetable garden proper. with row upon row of head high corn, with melons twining in and out of the stems, then, a half dozen rows of potatoes, a patch of kumera, odd rows of cabbage, beet, and carrots……in a damp corner a patch of Taro and in this mid summer, the rows of strawberries only hinting at their earlier abundance.

And in all sorts of corners were small fruits, and in every vacant fence line you would find a peach tree, not one of these tasteless highly coloured peaches of today, but a white peach, or a white fleshed nectarine, an odd fig, two or three plums, half a dozen apples, a little grove of tree tomatoes. Past the tank stands clothed in purple passion fruit and onto the lawns surrounding the house with every few yards an orange tree, a grapefruit, a mandarin, lemon trees….. I have not invented any of the plantings, I have missed out dozens.

Of course we have overlooked the flower gardens. Every boundary and house wall had its borders planted with whatever had taken Sarah’s fancy…..for all this was the result of her planning, her planting, her cultivation and her harvesting…..”

Excerpt quoted verbatim from “ They Were New Zealanders” A history of the Kellys of Waima, Hokianga written by Trevor Bayliss, ( Son in law of Maurice and Sarah Kelly ) for the Kelly family. Self published,
Auckland 2001.

The Big House at Waima, for most of the locals now, Waima Lodge, has remained a symbol of European influence in the South Hokianga district.
P.W. Hohepa obliquely refers to it as one of the “superior houses” the unfurnished valuation of which in 1955 was ten thousand pounds (and connected to the electrical grid!) in his 1961 thesis “A Maori Community in Northland” on the social structure of Waima in the 1950’s.

“The House” is also the realization of my dreams.
I feel as if some of the design and location ideals and values that I hold were shared by Maurice Claude. We were also in similar stages of life, Maurice was 48 years old when he had the house built by McMillan in 1920. I was 48 when I bought the house with Julie in 2005.
Although I am clearly a more practical person than Mossie (as he was affectionately known) Maurice loved and demanded quality. I’m glad he did.
I have now completed the restoration of 3 villas. Of the two previous, one was in Helensville and the other in Grey Lynn, both were box villas of the type sold in kit set form by the Kauri Timber Company prior to the First World War.

Harmen R Hielkema.

Julie and I write ourselves into the history of Waima Lodge

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW


By Julie Holton & Harmen Hielkema

Ka riro he au heke, e kore e hoki ki tóna mátápuna anó.
The flowing current moves on and will never again return to its source.
(We will not get a second chance)

Kura-pae a Máhina.
The red ornament of Mahina.
(One man’s rubbish may be another’s treasure)

Are our current lifestyles really achieving our long-term expectations of wellbeing, health, wealth and prosperity?

Lifestyle seems to be a much overused and sometimes misused term, implying much more than it really means and perceived by many to be the indulgence of a privileged middle class rather than a birthright for all. Julie and I are of that age group and educational level where we, as with many of our contemporaries, are seeking to live closer to our personal truth.

As a lecturer in design at the Auckland University of Technology I tended to lace my design teaching with an emphasis on ecological sustainability in the timeless way. As time went by I felt more and more hypocritical of our theoretical approach to teaching and learning, particularly in regard to the way in which we were living from day to day in Auckland City. Eventually a day came when our discontent and inner tension became too strong to ignore.

Health may well be one of our greatest assets. Without a fully functioning immune system, wracked with doubt & anxiety, stress, sleeplessness, chronic pain and illness, low resistance to viral and bacterial infection, life can be difficult and joyless. Long term depression and low-grade performance are a vicious, negative spiral from which it can be difficult to extricate one’s self.

Julie and I were aware of what was happening to us. We had been suffering the effects of chronic illness and the conventional medical prognosis for both of us was very poor. It was this more than anything that decided us on a drastic course of action to change our lives before the opportunity (and our energy) passed us by.

We visualized our new lifestyle and chose our new property using a mixture of logical analysis by way of a long list of criteria (which the property met by over 90 %) and intuition. We responded strongly to our feelings of “rightness” as I maneuvered the curser with growing excitement over the web page featuring our home to be. My arm and right shoulder prickled with goose flesh as we read the land agent’s description, which on reflection feels more as though the house chose us.

Our criteria comprised of a list that Julie & I agreed to compile independently. We merged the two lists and found that we valued similar things. Our criteria included things like:

Our next property had to be fertile, well-drained and north facing, preferably coastal, with a view (or at least near mountains) and/or a river. The property needed to be in an area where we had access to our families and guests without having to fly, preferably within half a day’s drive of Auckland. We wanted an established garden with fruiting trees, a good quality dwelling suitable for our business plan (operating a hosted luxury lodge) and it had to have a workshop. The house needed to be in sound condition with plenty of character. Bonus criteria included open fires x 2 a wetback fire, solar water heating, a bore, roof and river water, an ancient water pump and reticulation system and a generator house plus proximity to broadband connection.

We used all the research tools available to us to find what we were looking for. Internet, real estate catalogues and tips from friends and family. Our year long search lead us to a property in the South Hokianga district of Northland in a small rural Maori community called Waima where we purchased an old kauri and totara villa on 2.25 hectares of rural land with a river boundary. We put our Auckland home on the Market and, after a successful sale we resigned our jobs and moved north.

The winding down of our Auckland existence was quite a wrench with unexpected resistance from surprising quarters, the shock news of our resignation was met with cheers from our colleagues as if we had somehow made a great escape from a concentration camp. They remarked on how brave they thought we were. Our families took some time to adjust to the idea however, they could see that the change was well considered so they trusted our decision to make that change. To be truthful we were suffering from anxiety for all the reasons that people have experienced when they let go of their safety lines and plunge into the unknown.

Packing up our belongings and loading them on a truck takes no time to describe and words simply cannot convey how we felt as we creaked and groaned our way northward in the teeth of a June gale laced with driving rain in our overloaded vehicles. We arrived in the dark and bogged the van on the lawn. My first step onto our new property was into a cowpat, one of many of the infamous free-range and feral animals we were to encounter in Waima.

Julie and I have both come from diverse working backgrounds both finally settling in careers that suited our natures by trial and error, see our website for more of that story www,waima_lodge.co.nz. This random and varied career path had given us skills and insights that have proven very useful in our lives together today. Cues and clues to the story of our journey describing the steps we took to where we are today are scrawled on the pages of several journals full of lists and drawings of things to buy and projects to complete. Writing lists with clear achievable goals and checking them off after completion is both rewarding and essential to our getting this far together.

We had written a detailed business plan relying heavily on the knowledge we gained from learned theory and bitterly bought from our successes and failures in our previous endevours. We sought expert advice from our accountant and bank manager. We thoroughly researched the history and geography of our chosen area and its suitability to our new lives.

The restoration and refurbishment of Waima Lodge took careful planning, patience, skill, hard work and determination to reach this stage. Among the challenges was the modification of the old building to suit a modern way of life. The house had been built to the highest possible standards of design, workmanship and materials and as a result was sound and perfectly suited to its location and the needs of its first owners in 1920. The passage of time and the neglect of subsequent owners had taken its toll. We replaced all the plumbing & wiring, refitted all 4 bathrooms, the kitchen & redecorated the entire interior. We installed insulation in the ceiling and under the floor, redesigned & rebuilt the solar water heating system and redesigned & installed a wood fired wetback radiator, heating system. Most of these were features that were in the house when we bought it though they were under performing or not working at all. An H.R.V. ventilation system provides low cost dehumidified ventilation and has transformed the atmosphere of the house.

We have relied heavily on sourcing recycled materials in order to maintain the integrity & quality of the build and keep costs as low as possible, for this reason we have undertaken most of the work ourselves though we have brought in outside specialist help in the form of electricians, plumbers and painters when the need arose.

During the course of this 3-year project, I have come to realise that the house and garden in its present form at Waima was the result of people whose lifestyle was ideally suited to their needs at the time. It afforded them and their extended family the necessaries of life throughout the great depression and the Second World War. On the site were two large diesel DC generators, a ground water bore, a river fed water source and an efficient roof water collection and reticulation system. The garden was planted extensively in fruiting and nut bearing trees, grapes & passion fruit. They kept chickens for eggs and meat and cultivated a large kitchen garden of vegetables and herbs.

There was abundant wildlife in the surrounding area including fish, fowl, hares, rabbits, pigs & goats. There was some reliance on trade, goods and services from the local town of Kaikohe, which at first, was met with the use of a horse and buggy and later replaced with a motorcar. No provision was ever made on site for a crossing or facility for a car in the form of driveway or garage, which says something of their attitude and relationship to the car! We benefit from the foresight of Maurice and Sarah Kelly and pay them the respect they deserve by collecting, recording and telling their story, which is a very important one in the history of the Hokianga.

Over the past 3 years we have partially tamed an enormous Capability Brown style garden, re-established the vegetable gardens, we have a flock of chickens, we preserve spray-free orchard produce and Waima Lodge (now the home of Harmen and Julie) is up to a standard that Maurice and Sarah would be proud and pleased to see, right down to the original colour scheme. Coincidently Maurice was the same age as I am now (50 years) when he completed the Waima house project in 1920. As a result of our hard work, clean water, air & organic home grown produce, our health has been restored to a very high level, which allows us to feel and fully appreciate the quality of life that we knew we were entitled to.

We have replaced our petrol line trimmer with a scythe, a tool that is more efficient than its modern counterpart and is proving to be better for our selves and the environment in which we live. We use our car as little as possible and carefully plan outings to coincide with as many errands as we can fit into a day. Further initiatives relating to the creation of our own energy and further refining our systems continue as time and money allow.

We over ran our budget for this project by a factor of 10 with unforeseen expenses and problems with electrics and plumbing. Also our expectations and fortunes have changed with the ups and downs of the local and global economy with the consequential slowdown in the tourism industry. We have adapted by continuing to search for alternative sources of income including hosting special dinners for the local community, art, music (we both play music for our guests and neighbours) and other creative projects, which continue to grow apace.

On a positive note we now have the opportunity to share our lifestyle with our local and international guests for our mutual benefits. Where pale exhausted visitors arrive they leave us revitalised from their stay with us, enthused that they too can choose to make the changes necessary to their lives. Several of our friends and colleagues were inspired by our move and made similar changes themselves. Perhaps change only occurs once we have made the decision to apply what we (and our ancestors) have learned over many lifetimes to our attitudes, behaviour & actions.

Whilst after three and a half years we still cannot say with any certainty that our activities will sustain us in the long term we continue to strive to that end. Would we recommend that others do what we have done? Of course, yes! Only be sure that you do this for the right reasons for you. Choose carefully, you may just get what you really want.

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust.

It has been slowly dawning on me that the story of the Kelly family and their way of life in Waima is a blueprint for our own lives, a step back… to the future.
(For more of the Kelly story go to; http://waimalodgekellys.blogspot.com/)

Harmen Hielkema

Harmen Hielkema and Julie Holton on the sun porch at Waima 2009

Editor’s Note:
The extraordinary growth of “Lifestyle Blocks” over the last decade has spawned a supporting system of magazines and books extolling a kiwi version of The Good Life. In that time more than 60,000 lifestyle blocks have been developed, mostly around the urban fringes with many of their budding Richard Briers and Felicity Kendals seeking a more sustainable life, free from the stresses of the corporate world.

The 1975 British sitcom followed on from the (first) 1974 oil crisis, and marked a kind of watershed for many viewers reaching their midlife and concerned for the first time about living “outside the system”. In their home in Surbiton, Tom and Barbara Good pursue a sustainable life, digging up their front and back gardens and turning them into allotments, growing and bottling their own fruit and vegetables, raising chickens, a goat and a rooster. They generated their own electricity, using methane from animal waste, and they even attempted to make their own clothes. They also worked at selling or bartering surplus crops for essentials which they could not make themselves as they tried to cut their monetary requirements to the minimum with varying success.

Part of the reason for the show’s success lay in the fact that even then, significant numbers of the viewing audience could see the sense and need to reduce consumption and to conserve fragile and finite resources, to live more holistically. That awareness is now even more widespread and has partly fuelled the dramatic shift to the country. Here, Julie Holton and Harmen Hielkema share their own experiences of that shift from an inner city professional life to an old totara and kauri villa on two and a quarter hectares with a dream of turning it into the sustainable B&B now known as Waima Lodge..

Tony Ward

"Organic Explorer"

"They Were New Zealanders." by Trevor Bayliss

Please click on each page to get a larger view

























Reproduced by kind permission of Trevor and Marjory Bayliss and the Kelly family representative Deborah Robertson.
In obtaining permission to publish this material I was asked by the Author to omit pages that contained personal family information hence the missing pages.

Kelly family snaps of Waima Lodge house and garden

Trevor Bayliss the Author of the book "They were New Zealanders" featured in this blog,
watering his flowers in front of Waima Lodge 1n the mid 1930's.























Looking south east across the Waima lawn over the recently planted rose circle dug by Trevor Bayliss




















Waima Store 1962 originally M.C. Kelly Store
The first Waima store was established by William Satchel after he had been put off his land holding in the 1880's. The old Bedford school bus was one of a small fleet & part of Maurice Kelly's empire along with the motor garage and post office all run by members of his family.















The Waima House as it was in 1972 when it was sold out of the family for the first time since it was built in 1920.
















A view from the Wesleyan Mission House at Waima Moehau looking back toward the Waima Range.

















Sarah Kelly outside the front gate of her Waima home.















Maurice and Sarah with family & friends in the Waima House dining room on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
















Cutting the Cake Maurice and Sarah on his 90th birthday.























All Three daughters were married at Waima.
although this image is of Maurice with either a sister of Sarah or a close family friend.

















Members of the wedding party at Waima, the palms are now 30 meters tall!























Maurice Arthur Kelly inspects his mother's garden. Arthur was their first born at Pakenae in 1908.













































Audrey Kelly with Kidd? on the front steps of the Waima House.
















Audrey Kelly's wedding party


















The great pounamu adze that was gifted to Sarah Kelly by John Webster of Opononi
was used as a front door stop in Sarah's Waima house for as long as she lived there.
now in the family collection of Trevor and Marjorie Bayliss.

An adze of this size is of enormous value both in terms of  historic and monetary.
It's gifting to the Kelly's suggests great trust and friendship.