May 2006
Sue Hoffart meets a Great
Barrier resident who has made the most of the island's special magic.
Photographs: Kevin Emirali
At the south-eastern end of Great Barrier
Island a gravel road passes a "No exit: legal road stops" sign. Judy Gilbert
lives beyond the point of no return.
The former Auckland city dweller has
happily forsaken reticulated power and water along with traffic noise,
neighbours and the need to rush everywhere all the time. Now she’s used to
gardening on steep, rocky, wind-ravaged terrain in the company of friendly
kaka. And she is unfazed by the need to trap rats, deal with a composting
toilet or wait for her grocery order to arrive by ferry.
This life is, after all, the realisation
of a thirty-three-year dream. Judy was just nineteen and a first-year
teacher when she bought into a collectively owned 240-hectare block of
rugged coastal land on the island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.
continued
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