To the Barrons New Zealand offered the perfect opportunity to have the kind of creative life they were searching for. Words: Mic Dover, pictures: Anna Hansen, Mic Dover.
“To be able to sit by a playground next to the beach with great espressos, delicious food, huge palm trees and blue skies – it makes parenting a real pleasure!”
Architect Marc Barron and his wife, interior designer Sally, moved from East Finchley in North London to Nelson in New Zealand in 2003 with their four children Louis, 14, Cissie, 13, Harvey, nine, and Sidney, seven. Sally was actually born in New Zealand but moved to England when she was a teenager, and her childhood memories of the Nelson region played a significant part in the Barron family’s decision to emigrate to this part of the world.
They are not alone. Recent census data shows Nelson, population 43,000, now has more British-born residents per head of the population than anywhere else in the country, almost one in ten. The city is nestled amongst tree-clad hills overlooking the sparkling Tasman Sea whose waves lap the ever-popular Tahunanui Beach, a place where many New Zealanders – especially those with families - go for their summer holidays.
Nelson has the best climate in New Zealand, and regularly tops the national statistics for sunshine hours, with an annual average total of over 2400 hours (compared to London’s 1500) creating an outdoor lifestyle that the Barron family have eagerly embraced.
Sally and Marc met at the Royal College of Art in London in 1992 – “our eyes met across the drawing board!” quips Marc - and soon found themselves living together in north London before deciding to wed in ’93, and start a family a year later. Nearly a decade and three children later, Sally was pregnant with their fourth child and the Barrons were starting to tire of the big city lifestyle and events like 9/11 made them take stock of what the future might hold.
“But it wasn’t just the terrorist threat,” says Marc, “that was hardly new in London. It was lots of other things – arriving home late and missing the kids’ bedtimes, the way the tube seemed to become more and more overcrowded, the roads more congested and so on.”
“There were positive reasons as well,” says Sally. “Life here gives us more spare time and more quality family time. And we’re five minutes from the sea for the summer and in the winter just an hour and a half away from Rainbow, a lovely little ski field.”
“In England, for a family of six, a ski trip is expensive and time-consuming,” says Marc. “Even a day trip to the beach could involve fighting your way out of London on gridlocked roads – then when you eventually get the beach, it rains anyway!”
Read the full article in our January 2009 edition.
