Last year I spent a month in Motueka on a teaching section. In case you don't know the place it is a town a little over an hours drive from Nelson at the top of the South Island. It is a really beautiful place!
I stayed there with my Auntie at Riverside Community. That area of NZ almost breeds Communes and Riverside is probably the oldest and one of the most well-known communes in NZ. It was founded by conscientious objecters after 2nd world war was over. I think it was all dreamed up while they were in prison together. My Grandpa was a conscientious objecter also and while he wasn't one of the founders, he was a friend and so my family has had links with the community even before my Auntie joined it.
My father also spent decent amounts of time there in his youth helping out with the orcharding and later building a sewage treatment plant.
It is quite a commercial commune and has a large area of land. It is a dairy farm but I believe it's main money earner is Apples.
People live in seperate houses and don't have shared meals every day but they do have a shared meal in the hall every second Saturday (non-compulsory but fun!) and on the other Saturday someone will have a pot-luck dinner at their house. It's generally rostered around.
Riverside also has a cafe! It is really beautiful with gorgeous copper worked sculptures displayed on the inside. The hot chocolate wasn't that great but it was worth it for the atmosphere.
My Auntie lives there and raised her family there and our family would go there for holidays. It was soo neat! At Christmas time they have a 'pageant' and put on a Nativity Play with carol singing and so on. When I was there last year I got to take part in the mid-winter solstice celebration which involved a spiral path of candles and walking through it from youngest to oldest adding to the path. The candle holders were... apples!
The weather is fabulous there and on mid-winter day I went to the orchard and picked apples. I also picked some chillis, feijoas and mandarins that day. The frosts on the cold nights were fierce and when I went to my car in the morning I actually got to see those fern shapes made of ice.
The title of my post is from a song I learned at Riverside one school holiday some years ago.
Happiness runs in a circular motion
Life is like a little boat upon the sea
Everybody's just a part of everything anyway
You can be happy if you let yourself be.
Na na na na na na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na na na na na
Why-O
Because
Why-O
Because
It's a three part round!
Posted by giffy at October 21, 2004 12:39 PM | TrackBack