Sitting on a narrow arm of the Hokianga harbour is Rāwene. It’s a country town with a population of  “just below 500 people” (according to the Northland Ferries website). Appropriately, the ferry is the centre point of town – chugging away from the tip of the peninsula, linking south Hokianga to the north. 

Living in Rāwene seems cheap and sweetly so: harvesting produce from the garden, taking up healthy, economic hobbies and spending nights cosy at home. But I can be prone to idealising country life – especially when I’m visiting my mum, watching the sun dip below the mangroves and placid waters that fringe the town. During my recent trip I wondered: is living away from the city cheaper, really? So I asked some Rāwene locals. 

Swarmi Bak Varanda a.k.a Nui Seven Oaks a.k.a Bruce Anderson 

I find Swarmi/Nui/Bruce at the community centre. He’s having a cuppa and chatting away with friends. He has a singular dreadlock beard adorned with coloured thread and hanging past his waist. He is wearing his distinctive bright orange beanie and pants, and a t-shirt printed with a McDonald's logo and the word “McShit”.  

Bruce is a poet, author, past fish-and-chip-shop owner and general wise man. He has lived in the Hokianga since 1971, following an instinct to move to the harbour where, as a lad, he caught a memorable fish. He says that as a child he “fell in love with the bush and… figured out to myself, for myself, the world starts where the road ends.”

I ask Bruce about money. “Well it’s only ever important to me if I haven’t got any. If I’ve got some, I never even think about it.” His expenses are well-organised, and he lives humbly; saving to send money back to Nepal and fund the months he spends there annually. Bruce fasts often, and is happy to tighten his belt and have a drink of water for tea if nothing much is on the menu. His modest simple living isn’t a slog, he tells me. “I’m wealthy because I’ve got friends. My body’s 77 years young, still goes. I can still walk in the mountains, do a little bit of hard stuff. I walk to town, don’t want a car.”

Bruce’s lifestyle isn’t the idyll many urbanites picture: he works hard, using his hunting and gathering skills to keep things simple. We talk about city folk (of which, I suppose, I am one) and why they might view country living as cheap and Bruce explains: “I feel like they’re not as tempted to be flamboyant with their money.” He then affects an urbanite tone, just a little hurried: “‘oh let’s go to such-and-such a show, we’ve got to catch such-and-such’.”

Essentially, Bruce says, if you do it right, living out of the city can cost a whole lot less money: catch fish, grow a garden, have chickens. He suggests a technique for cheaper living, for everyone – rural, provincial, or urban. “The thing that costs less money, most importantly, is to stop wanting. Stop wanting and you’ve got peace. All we need is a little bit of food, a little bit of clothes, a little bit of  shelter, something to dream about.”

Benita and Gary McPhee 

Benita and Gary have lived in Rāwene for 42 years, and we meet in their kitchen. It has a sort of elegant and loose feel; it’s all wood and spaciousness. On the table is a pile of ginger and garlic  stacked high, with a small knife balancing atop it all.

I know that Benita and Gary spend time in Croatia each year, but it’s not just because of this that they immediately strike me as Mediterranean (though it’s Benita who has Croatian heritage). Gary wears a light blue linen shirt, hair combed back, and Benita is majorly chic in that enviable European, no-effort way – she wears a beautiful purple jumper with loose gardening pants.

When I ask about money in a small-town context, rates are the first thing that comes to mind. “Our rates are just going up stupidly,” says Gary. These rising payments don’t necessarily mean the council is getting things done. “We just aren't getting the services,” explains Benita. “We have to  be on the phone [to the council] all the time.” In the summer, people couldn't walk on the footpaths because of towering, bowed weeds. Children were walking on the road, and it was only after  Benita reported the risk of an accident that the council did something. 

The state of the roads, too, makes rising rates seem ridiculous. Gary says when it comes to potholes, council contractors “just plug over the hole… one month later, it's back to what it was.”

We talk about urban perspectives on country living, and Benita thinks along the same lines as Bruce. “Living in Auckland, there's a lot more temptation: looking to go out for dinner, you can go to different stores, clothing stores and buy heaps more… we haven’t got that variety.”

Despite the rates, for Gary and Benita living in the country is fairly cheap (though they report the price of food and living is more affordable in Croatia). In Rāwene, they eat well at home and grow organic vegetables and herbs, often sharing produce with neighbours and friends.  

Rhonda King 

Before I visit Rhona, she tells me I’ll be able to identify her house as the one with dogs barking. She’s right: there are about four dogs outside, the type I really like – knuckle-head Staffy crosses, wagging their tails and snuffling between barks.  

Rhonda helps out with the charity Bay of Island Animal Rescue by taking in hurt or abandoned animals. She has a calm and welcoming character, and I understand why her foster pets love her as she speaks generously about them; giving me a rundown on the lives they had before they came to her. Inside, lapping from a bowl, I see a white cat with stitches where its ears should be. 

Rhona moved to Rāwene in 2019. She tells me living here is pretty similar to the city, money wise. “Things cost more anyway, like postage. You pay extra.” Fuel is another cost – if you want to go to  the supermarket, or any other, bigger, store, you need to drive, and the trip is usually pretty long. The closest ‘proper’ supermarket to Rāwene is in Kaikohe – a 35-minute drive away. The road  there is potholed and winding, without passing lanes. I’ve been stuck behind slow drivers on it before, and almost had head-on collisions with people recklessly overtaking on corners. 

Of Aucklanders, Rhonda thinks they might view life in small towns as peaceful, lovely, without the pressures of the city; “so cheap, and you just live off the garden”. But you have to be willing to put the work in, she clarifies. 

Rhonda’s thought, when moving up from Auckland, was that she would ‘get away from it all,’ but existing in the country takes a lot of time and energy, she says, and life has become busier and  busier. “I haven't sort of maintained an idyllic or peaceful lifestyle that I thought I might.”  

The pithy question I’d prepared to end all my interviews falls somewhat flat with the locals: what meal would you make if food was free? While interviewees search for answers, I understand how removed this question is from the way of thinking and living they’ve described to me: where food is the result of tangible work, often fresh from the earth, and this is how they like it. 

Rhonda says she’d make her favourite food: lasagne; a comfort food that’s not flashy or overly expensive. Benita and Gary reckon crayfish is their answer, though they outline the efforts involved. “You still  go out in a boat and pay your petrol.” Bruce describes the joy of eating real food: “vitalised” food, more connected to earth and effort than money. He sums up the country attitude: “People ask me, what’s your favourite fish? And I say, a fresh fat one.”

• Bruce Anderson, also known as Swarmi Bak Veranda and Nui Seven Oaks, has a book called The Cosmic Woolpresser that I recommend you buy and read. It’s full of Hokianga tales and is generally a roaring read. You can buy it as an eBook, and you should.