Don Springfield meets the couple who swapped life in Dorset for the a new start in New Zealand’s sunniest city.
Recent census data revealed that the New Zealand city of Nelson now has more British-born residents per head of population than anywhere else in the country – almost one in ten. In the UK, however, Nelson pretty much remains a sunny secret: mention its name to most Brits and they will probably think first of the famous admiral, or perhaps of the town of the same name in Lancashire.
It was for this little known Kiwi city, however, that Daniel and Sarah Allen left their idyllic home in Dorset in 2003 – and it a move they have never regretted.
The couple met in 1998, when British-born Daniel, a photographer, was backpacking through Auckland. There he was introduced to a beautiful young horticulturalist called Sarah. Some windsurfing and walks in New Zealand’s national parks followed, and very quickly, the pair had become soul mates. New Zealander Sarah was working in Auckland’s botanical gardens, but was nursing a long-held ambition to see Europe – and Daniel was more than ready to be her personal guide.
So in 1999, they travelled to the UK via Australia, Nepal and Thailand and found a flat above a fish and chip shop in Teddington, London, so that Sarah could take up a job with the National Trust. Daniel’s fledgling photography business was taking off, with his photos appeared in magazines, books, on CD covers and even on billboards, but the couple weren’t happy with life in London.
“We started escaping to the country every weekend,” says Sarah, “and found ourselves dreading going back.” But then, to the couple’s delight, Sarah landed a senior gardener’s job on the 7,000 acre Rushmore Estate at Cranbourne Chase in Dorset, which included a tied cottage for the couple. “It was totally idyllic,” says Daniel. “And we felt like life just couldn’t get any better.”
The couple married in 2001, honeymooning in Morocco. Life was good, but one rainy morning in a Salisbury café, two momentous decisions were made – first to start a family, and second to raise that family in New Zealand. Elated, the couple wandered into a second-hand bookshop and picked up a dog-eared copy of the Lonely Planet guide. “It fell open at Nelson, on the South Island,” recalls Daniel. “It said ‘sunniest place in New Zealand, a small city of artists and artisans with a Mediterranean lifestyle.’ I think we knew at that moment where we would end up.”
Sarah soon became pregnant, and the excited couple booked their flights. Why New Zealand? “Well, obviously, my nationality made Daniel’s residency fairly straightforward,” explains Sarah, “although we still had to provide wedding pictures to prove the marriage was genuine! But the key thing was the realisation that we could pretty quickly get a lifestyle down under that would take us years to achieve in the UK.”
They arrived in Nelson in 2003. “It blew us away,” says Daniel. “The hills, the sea, the friendliness of the people. We didn’t know a soul, but felt at home immediately. We had no money, no car, no house, no jobs – just the packs on our backs and a baby on the way – but we knew we’d found our Xanadu.”
Since then, it has been an eventful four years for Daniel and Sarah. Daughter Harriet was born in 2003, followed by Hester in 2005 and a third child is due this September. “Being a parent in Nelson is very easy,” says Sarah. “Sometimes the whole town feels like a crèche, it’s such a child-friendly city. We decided to have a home birth, which has been very straightforward and is regarded as quite normal here. The antenatal system is brilliant, with independent midwives who take care of you throughout your pregnancy, birth and early baby days.”
Sarah also praises the quality of education in Nelson. She was recently elected president of her local playcentre. “It’s a parent-run facility and all the mums and dads are very committed to maintaining its high standards. You can learn alongside your children – it’s great.”
So do Daniel and Sarah miss England at all? “I miss friends and family of course, and those country pubs on a cold winter’s evening,” says Daniel wistfully. “The smell of oak burning in a 15th century pub, the sound of boots clomping over a flagstone floor – that’s a memory that can make me feel a bit homesick. But there’re so many Brits here, you never feel that far from Blighty – I even get to play football every week with a gang of ex-pat ‘Poms’!”
Daniel has always been fascinated by Britain’s ancient standing stones and in a young country like New Zealand, he admits he misses that sense of connection with ancient history. Sarah agrees, “It really makes you think when you realise that the volcanic island of Rangitoto was erupting out of the sea here at the same time as work began on the construction of Salisbury cathedral!”
Sarah also misses access to the wide range of cultural experiences. “I miss that huge choice of museums, theatres, art galleries and so on – New Zealand’s geographic location makes that a bit difficult. But we’re happy here – especially with the outdoor lifestyle. Camping with the family is lots easier here than in the UK!”
For Daniel, the big pluses of Nelson are the exquisite light, the stunning scenery, the lack of traffic and “the way we can look out of our window and watch the azure sea against a backdrop of snow-clad mountains – yet thanks to that sunshine, it’s warm enough to eat lunch on the deck – even in the winter.”
Job-wise, Daniel has quickly established a reputation as one of the best photographers in the region, and is inundated with work, simply through word of mouth. “When I arrived, there were lots of wedding and portrait photographers but not much else, so I was able to exploit a niche opportunity – advertising photography with European flair.”
Daniel is now planning to move towards doing more book publishing and project-based work and has joined forces with a local businessman to launch NZstories.com, a feature syndication agency, and WorldMediaFeed.com, which is gearing up to supply digital content to online aggregators such as Yahoo and the BBC. “Good broadband infrastructure means Nelson being thousands of miles away from our customers is no longer an issue,” says Daniel.
In the long term, Sarah will probably not go back to horticulture, “unless it’s my own garden,” she says. “What I’ve always wanted to do is own and run my own bookshop and that might fit in quite well with Daniel’s book publishing ambitions.”
For the Allen family, at the start of that great adventure called parenthood, they feel that Nelson is the perfect resting place, at least until the kids leave home. After that, who knows – those itchy feet may have Daniel and Sarah reaching for their backpacks yet again.
It was for this little known Kiwi city, however, that Daniel and Sarah Allen left their idyllic home in Dorset in 2003 – and it a move they have never regretted.
The couple met in 1998, when British-born Daniel, a photographer, was backpacking through Auckland. There he was introduced to a beautiful young horticulturalist called Sarah. Some windsurfing and walks in New Zealand’s national parks followed, and very quickly, the pair had become soul mates. New Zealander Sarah was working in Auckland’s botanical gardens, but was nursing a long-held ambition to see Europe – and Daniel was more than ready to be her personal guide.
So in 1999, they travelled to the UK via Australia, Nepal and Thailand and found a flat above a fish and chip shop in Teddington, London, so that Sarah could take up a job with the National Trust. Daniel’s fledgling photography business was taking off, with his photos appeared in magazines, books, on CD covers and even on billboards, but the couple weren’t happy with life in London.
“We started escaping to the country every weekend,” says Sarah, “and found ourselves dreading going back.” But then, to the couple’s delight, Sarah landed a senior gardener’s job on the 7,000 acre Rushmore Estate at Cranbourne Chase in Dorset, which included a tied cottage for the couple. “It was totally idyllic,” says Daniel. “And we felt like life just couldn’t get any better.”
The couple married in 2001, honeymooning in Morocco. Life was good, but one rainy morning in a Salisbury café, two momentous decisions were made – first to start a family, and second to raise that family in New Zealand. Elated, the couple wandered into a second-hand bookshop and picked up a dog-eared copy of the Lonely Planet guide. “It fell open at Nelson, on the South Island,” recalls Daniel. “It said ‘sunniest place in New Zealand, a small city of artists and artisans with a Mediterranean lifestyle.’ I think we knew at that moment where we would end up.”
Sarah soon became pregnant, and the excited couple booked their flights. Why New Zealand? “Well, obviously, my nationality made Daniel’s residency fairly straightforward,” explains Sarah, “although we still had to provide wedding pictures to prove the marriage was genuine! But the key thing was the realisation that we could pretty quickly get a lifestyle down under that would take us years to achieve in the UK.”
They arrived in Nelson in 2003. “It blew us away,” says Daniel. “The hills, the sea, the friendliness of the people. We didn’t know a soul, but felt at home immediately. We had no money, no car, no house, no jobs – just the packs on our backs and a baby on the way – but we knew we’d found our Xanadu.”
Since then, it has been an eventful four years for Daniel and Sarah. Daughter Harriet was born in 2003, followed by Hester in 2005 and a third child is due this September. “Being a parent in Nelson is very easy,” says Sarah. “Sometimes the whole town feels like a crèche, it’s such a child-friendly city. We decided to have a home birth, which has been very straightforward and is regarded as quite normal here. The antenatal system is brilliant, with independent midwives who take care of you throughout your pregnancy, birth and early baby days.”
Sarah also praises the quality of education in Nelson. She was recently elected president of her local playcentre. “It’s a parent-run facility and all the mums and dads are very committed to maintaining its high standards. You can learn alongside your children – it’s great.”
So do Daniel and Sarah miss England at all? “I miss friends and family of course, and those country pubs on a cold winter’s evening,” says Daniel wistfully. “The smell of oak burning in a 15th century pub, the sound of boots clomping over a flagstone floor – that’s a memory that can make me feel a bit homesick. But there’re so many Brits here, you never feel that far from Blighty – I even get to play football every week with a gang of ex-pat ‘Poms’!”
Daniel has always been fascinated by Britain’s ancient standing stones and in a young country like New Zealand, he admits he misses that sense of connection with ancient history. Sarah agrees, “It really makes you think when you realise that the volcanic island of Rangitoto was erupting out of the sea here at the same time as work began on the construction of Salisbury cathedral!”
Sarah also misses access to the wide range of cultural experiences. “I miss that huge choice of museums, theatres, art galleries and so on – New Zealand’s geographic location makes that a bit difficult. But we’re happy here – especially with the outdoor lifestyle. Camping with the family is lots easier here than in the UK!”
For Daniel, the big pluses of Nelson are the exquisite light, the stunning scenery, the lack of traffic and “the way we can look out of our window and watch the azure sea against a backdrop of snow-clad mountains – yet thanks to that sunshine, it’s warm enough to eat lunch on the deck – even in the winter.”
Job-wise, Daniel has quickly established a reputation as one of the best photographers in the region, and is inundated with work, simply through word of mouth. “When I arrived, there were lots of wedding and portrait photographers but not much else, so I was able to exploit a niche opportunity – advertising photography with European flair.”
Daniel is now planning to move towards doing more book publishing and project-based work and has joined forces with a local businessman to launch NZstories.com, a feature syndication agency, and WorldMediaFeed.com, which is gearing up to supply digital content to online aggregators such as Yahoo and the BBC. “Good broadband infrastructure means Nelson being thousands of miles away from our customers is no longer an issue,” says Daniel.
In the long term, Sarah will probably not go back to horticulture, “unless it’s my own garden,” she says. “What I’ve always wanted to do is own and run my own bookshop and that might fit in quite well with Daniel’s book publishing ambitions.”
For the Allen family, at the start of that great adventure called parenthood, they feel that Nelson is the perfect resting place, at least until the kids leave home. After that, who knows – those itchy feet may have Daniel and Sarah reaching for their backpacks yet again.
