Summer holidays got you dreaming of a happier, easier, gentler life in the provinces? Amanda Thompson actually made the move, and has some real talk on what to expect.

God I love Auckland. Sorry Wellington, hope we can stay friends – but my heart is a Jaffa flavoured Jaffa cake filled with Jaffas and topped with orange and chocolate sprinkles on a chocolate coloured plate surrounded by orange slices.

I wasn’t born in the city of Sails/Sales but then nobody is – Auckland’s 1.6 million people mostly come from somewhere else, each person choosing this isthmus of anti-cyclonic gloom above all other possible places. And we all know it’s terrible. I’m not going to try and pretend the city isn’t stuffed full of road cones, mosquitoes, personal trainers, people who use their phone on speaker and vape in your face. But there are literally no other downsides. Apart from the traffic, the property prices, the cutthroat school zones, the traffic, the shite public transport, the humidity and the traffic. But there are also jobs and entertainment and cuisine and fashion and so much variety to be had – if you can’t find a part of Auckland you enjoy, you’re just not driving far enough. Keep driving. Seriously, much more driving. It’s Auckland, you’ve gone nowhere in the last half an hour. But if you have two million dollars (although three would be better) and a helicopter, what’s not to love?

I don’t live there anymore. When you get to a certain age and do not have two million dollars or a helicopter, and maybe you’ve popped a couple of sprogs, you tend to weigh up the free parking, perfectly pleasant schools and affordable homes you can get in the provinces against Auckland’s offerings – wankership in your neighbours, air pollution borne illness, work until you die – and you often go for the former. It’s weird.

And every summer, more Aucklanders will leave their sweaty gridlock and come to us in our sleepy town for a couple of weeks peace and seaside calm. They marvel at the cheap housing, the quiet beaches, the pleasant locals, the endless blue skies. And every year, their holiday ends and they trundle back to their rat-on-a-treadmill existence, stop-starting on the Southern Motorway for hours and thinking: maybe I should make the move?

So should you? What would you miss, what would you love? Is it worth it? Will you end up finally getting your own home if you move to the provinces, or just a Swandri and a wispy mullet? Is there any almond milk?

As a secret urbanite faking my way through the heart of small town Aotearoa for the past 15 years, here is my very valuable advice.

When you are thinking about moving because you want to get on the property ladder

This is the most common discussion that comes up with my old Auckland friends, the burning question, the big one. Could I buy a house? And the answer is a definite yes. Yes it is worth it, yes it is much cheaper and yes it is easier. If you were desperately considering that tiny cross-leased Lockwood with brown aluminium joinery in Henderson, know that in my town for the same price you could own an historic renovated villa with many bathrooms, high ceilings and a fancy kitchen. It will be five minutes from town, across the road from the school and ten minutes from the beach and you will probably have enough money left over to put in a spa. What else do you need to know? No, household basics like power and broadband are not noticeably dearer – and we do have reticulated water, sewage and a rubbish collection. Fast speed fibre connections, even. Rates can be expensive but not in a game changing way. In very small towns there are bargains to be had for less than $250k. This is not a joke, this is not a drill. It is a very real reason to move.

When you are thinking about moving because you dream of spending your weekends drifting around the quaint farmer’s market in a romantic fluttery dress with a basket and a large hat buying flowers or maybe selling your own mead 

No. Funnily enough, farmer’s markets are an urban invention. In the country, farmers are too busy actually farming to worry about that kind of shit on the weekend. Either that or they’re all at Saturday sport. Small towns take their sports seriously, and anyway, what else is there for the kids to do? A local clubroom has a wood carving over the bar proclaiming the wisdom “Get them into sports, keep them outta courts.” Every rugby ground, cricket pitch, netball court, touch field, or beach volleyball arena in our town heaves with families all day, all year (kids play in the morning, a fundraising sausage sizzle and fry bread for lunch, adults play in the afternoon, ‘after-match’ in the evening.) We do have the odd market, but we save them for selling important things like knitted bed socks and rimu chopping boards to tourists. Shopping is not a viable hobby here. Quickly change your interests from collecting novelty Victorian pin cushions to competitive adventure racing. It’s a great way to make friends which, as you will see, is very important in not-cities.

On Sundays nothing much is open anyway. Except church.

When you are thinking about moving to get out of the traffic

Yes. Holy hecka yes. All the yesses. Parking is free and right outside the door, too – although on a related note, you will definitely need to hang on to your filthy polluting 4WD. There is one bus a day and one taxi here. Forget you even heard of Uber. RIP trains, escooters etc.

When you are thinking about moving because you long for a kinder, more connected community

Yes. People are very kind in small towns. They chat with their neighbours, and they all know who you are. The same people that cut your hair (inexpertly) will play in your social netball team and collect your kids from school for you. They will smile at you and cuddle your baby when you are trying to get the groceries in the car. These are all wonderful things. However, there can be a dark side to this lack of anonymity. They all know who you are. Ever turned into the KFC carpark without indicating because you were busy trying to text your friends to ask what they wanted? You can guarantee that the person who watched you do it will a) never ever forget that you did that and b) be your local cop, or c) your next potential boss. Everybody will know your business and what they don’t know, they will feel free to completely fabricate and pass on as a fact. Plus that teenager you got shitty at because they licked their fingers before putting your lamington in a bag will be the same teenager who is your St John’s responder when someone finally smashes into your car because you don’t indicate, you dick. So don’t be a dick. Be considerate, take the time to chat to your good neighbours, and the good neighbours will be nice to you. 

When you are thinking about moving because the countryside looks cheaper, so you will have more money for your ‘lifestyle’ which is basically designer shoes, Korean noodles, arthouse cinema and craft gin cocktails every week between Thursday and Sunday

No. The painful truth about the provinces is that the arts, fashion, on-point noodles and lovely cocktails are not respected here. Neither are conspicuously extravagant lifestyles, or even shoes. You will have to accept the cult of the jandal in summer, the cult of the gumboot in winter. Embrace deep fried sushi and have hot chips with everything. Drink Lion Red but leave the pub at 9pm because Des the barman is closing up (he has sore feet and they’re out of chicken chips.) Grow your own kohlrabi because nobody round here even knows what that is and you can afford a garden now so stop complaining. Don’t come down here sneering at us for going barefoot in our supermarkets or nudey in our lakes, instead come along for the bareback ride. Let go of some of the high stress habits that were keeping you up at night gnawing your knuckles and worrying about getting old and tragic, your arse getting squarer and squarer in those ironic vintage wide leg Wranglers, pathetically still trying to be relevant by memorising the Laneways lineup. Let it all go.

When you are thinking about moving for the beach weather and the endless holiday vibe

Yes and no. Yes, you can nip down after work and have a surf every day. Yes, the beach will be wide, empty, pristine and beckoning – except when you want to use it. When you live in a seaside town you get resigned to the beach being full to the brim with Auckland wankers at the very best times of the year. Blocking all the roads with Audis and buying up all the Frujus, they torture our exhausted surf clubbies by constantly trying to get selfies with them and then launching their comically oversized inflatable flamingos outside the flags, in a rip, after they’ve had a few cheeky pinots inside the liquor ban zone. While wearing those stupid wide leg Wranglers.

Also, it is blistering hot summer for about ten months of the year and the only air conditioning is at Countdown. It can get old.

When you are thinking about moving because your kids want a pony

Yes. For the price of an average Auckland house you can afford enough land for several ponies. And a couple of dogs, one of which will be blind and fart under your bed, while the other keeps trying to herd the ponies. You might also have some ducks, a few cats, a cute pet lamb called Mary that you got for calf day last year but which is now fifty kilos of reeking mutton that still tries to get up on your couch with you and one cunt of a chicken that attacks to kill every time you go to the clothesline because it’s actually a rooster.

Living the dream.

An upcoming three-day conference in Auckland aims to ‘envision our future’, but the Ed Hillary-branded event appears to feature some odd guests, including one who thinks astrology can explain important historic events, and a self-help guru who’s been labelled a fraud. David Farrier reports.

A new year, a new pricey three-day conference, this time courtesy of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. “This is our moment to envision our future, work together and weave solutions to make an innovative, regenerative, and inclusive economy our reality,” announces the website for the New Frontiers conference.

The Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) is the brainchild of two brothers from the US, Matthew and Brian Monahan, together with Yoseph Ayele, originally from Ethiopia, who is CEO and the most public-facing of the three. It came about through a partnership between the trio’s NZ/US networking organisation Kiwi Connect and the Hillary Institute, a leadership charity founded by Sir Edmund Hillary himself. In turn, EHF has partnered with Immigration New Zealand to select candidates for sought after “global impact” visas that allow them to live and work in New Zealand for three years, with a path to permanent residence. According to the Immigration New Zealand website, the global impact visa, which was launched in 2017, is aimed at people who have “the combination of relentless drive, skills, global connections, and desire to leverage the unique opportunities New Zealand offers, to build successful innovation-based ventures, and make game-changing impact on the world”.

New Frontiers was first held on the Monahans’ property in Whitemans Valley, Upper Hutt, in 2014. In a 2017 Stuff story, the event was described as “a kind of techie’s version of Nevada’s Burning Man. Think yoga, yurts, giant domes, composting toilets, campfires, more yoga, drum circles, dancing, vegan food and talking – lots of talking.” Previous attendees include American film director James Cameron.

“It’s either a beautiful gathering of like-minded thinkers or a weird cult, depending on your point of view,” the story adds, quoting a local as saying: “There’s some freaky-looking punters down there camping out in their domes, doing yoga and singing Kumbaya to the moon.”

According to this June 2019 story from Bloomberg Businessweek, Immigration New Zealand migrant attraction manager Matt Hoskin turned up at one of those early New Frontiers gatherings, and Ayele was “co-opted as a de facto immigration recruiter”. In 2015, according to the story, then head of Immigration NZ Nigel Bickle “visited New Frontiers and started a conversation about a new immigration programme. A year later, New Zealand’s government approved the introduction of the global impact visa.”

This year New Frontiers is coming to Auckland, to be held at Ellerslie Racecourse from 24-26 February. Each day has a different theme: climate, wellbeing and technology. Tickets range from $350 to $1500.

I was curious to see the sorts of people who would be sharing their knowledge. 

I’d always associated Sir Edmund Hillary with innovation and adventure, and the fellowship’s own website says it’s a “global community of high-impact entrepreneurs, investors and changemakers, collaboratively building new paradigm solutions to global challenges from Aotearoa”.

So I was surprised to see that one of the top-billed speakers wasn’t a mountaineer or acclaimed climate scientist, but the Tim Robbins-esque Tim Ferriss, author of the 2007 book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, which launched a series of other “4 hour” books, including The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. He’ll be speaking at the conference on day two, which is focused on wellbeing.

Last year, Forbes wrote about Ferriss’s success in a piece called “Tim Ferriss Is Everything That’s Wrong With The Modern World (And Why You Should Follow His Lead)”. The piece looked at how Ferriss became the kickboxing champion of the world basically by gaming it: 

Ferris researched the sport’s rules and uncovered a technicality stating that contestants who step outside the fighting circle three times are disqualified. Armed with this knowledge, he worked out how to wriggle his body in such a way to get his opponents to do just that.

Is Tim Ferris the best kickboxer in the world? Not even close. But he has the title. And in the age we’re living in, that’s all that matters.

Most serious martial artists would consider Tim Ferriss’s behavior to be completely dishonorable. Fortunately for Ferriss, most of us aren’t serious martial artists. The people who rise to the top are no longer those who accomplish truly great things, but those who figure out how to most attractively package their shortcuts and fake-outs.

In a Jacobin article from 2018, headlined ‘The Fraud and the Four-Hour Workweek’, Meagan Day argued that “self-help millionaire Tim Ferriss is a fraud, but his success says a lot about modern capitalism and its discontents”.

So I guess if you’re into that sort of thing, he could be the man for you. What he has to do with anything related to Sir Edmund Hillary’s legacy I have no idea, but, hey, he’s sold a lot of books, made a lot of money as an early investor in Uber, and has 1.6 million Twitter followers. 

Yoseph Ayele told The Spinoff that while it was yet to be publicly announced, Ferriss had been selected for the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, and therefore the global impact visa. Ayele said he believed Ferriss wanted to work in the field of mental health and addiction in New Zealand.

Looking at some of the other day one speakers, I came upon Kenny Ausubel, founder of an environmental organisation called Bioneers. Ausubel worked closely with Leonardo DiCaprio on The 11th Hour, the actor’s 2007 climate change documentary. EHF’s Matthew Monahan is on the Bioneers’ board of directors.

Ausubel’s latest project, mentioned in passing on the New Frontiers website, is a 10-part documentary series called Changing of the Gods, which appears to be about how important world events relate to astrology.

Looking a little further on the website of that “documentary”, I found Ausubel made another documentary in 1988 called Hoxsey: How Healing Became a Crime. He also wrote a book called When Healing Becomes a Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies.

Hoxsey Therapy is a pseudoscience treatment for cancer which the US Food & Drug Administration banned back in the 60s, calling it “worthless and discredited”. 

Ayele emphasised that Ausubel was attending the conference to talk about his environmental work with Bioneers, not any of his other endeavours. “Kenny is coming to speak about climate solutions through his decades of experience in the environmental movement and work at Bioneers, and not about a documentary he independently made 20 years ago,” he wrote in an email to The Spinoff.

“Bioneers is a pioneer in the global environmental movement, and has been tested through time. The founders of the organisation are coming to New Zealand to share lessons from the global movements in climate action they are part of, to contribute to a timely discussion happening in NZ. There will also be other speakers bringing ideas for climate solutions from different angles.” 

Call me a sceptic, but I just don’t know if a man who’s into astrology and writes a book defending a hoax cancer therapy would be first on my invite list to a solve-the-climate meeting.

What makes it odd is that most of the speakers are impressive, and have important stories to tell. From the founder of Little Yellow Bird, which produces ethically made uniforms, to Hazel Heal, founder of Hepatitis C Action Aotearoa, many seem worthy and smart. Science communicator Michelle “Nanogirl” Dickinson is also in the mix.

When I started looking at the event, I tried to find a media contact on the New Frontiers website, but there wasn’t one. So I did things the old-fashioned way and sent them a message on Facebook. The next day they got back to me, saying they’d get back to me later that day.

With no word, I decided to write a sceptical tweet about it, because in my experience, sceptical tweets sometimes get answers.

Several minutes later I got an email from someone at the Edmund Hillary Foundation, asking if I’d like to attend. I wrote back clarifying that I didn’t particularly want to attend, but did have some questions for whoever was in charge of booking. 

Yoseph Ayele, co-founder and CEO of Edmund Hillary Fellowship, then wrote: “New Frontiers brings diverse and often divergent conversations that are happening around the world, with the goal of tackling pressing and highly interconnected challenges of our time, including the enormous climate crisis, rising inequality, global health, mass displacement, positive and negative effects of technology, and more.

“We’re providing a platform for these ideas to come together to share and collaborate on outcomes and solutions.”

The speaker selection for New Frontiers got me thinking about the other selection the Hillary Edmund Fellowship makes: of their fellows, one of whom, we now know, is Ferriss himself.

“Fellows are accepted into the programme through a competitive application process, with international Fellows receiving exclusive access to New Zealand’s new Global Impact Visa (GIVs).”

So the same organisation picking speakers like astrology fan Kenny Ausubel was also involved in selecting those who will then have access to apply for a special visa into New Zealand.

And while Immigration New Zealand is ultimately responsible for issuing these visas, they can only be issued to people who are picked as Edmund Hillary Fellows.

Ayele made it clear to The Spinoff that “the Edmund Hillary Fellows are selected with different criteria” to those selected to speak at New Frontiers. I’d like to think those criteria strike out “bogus cancer therapy apologists” and “astrology enthusiasts”. 

A line from The 4-Hour Workweek, the 2007 hit book of new fellow Tim Ferriss, comes to mind: “Expert status can be created in less than four weeks if you understand basic credibility indicators.”

We can only hope it requires a bit more than that to successfully apply for an Edmund Hillary Fellowship, a global impact visa, or a speaking spot at next year’s New Frontiers conference.

Additional reporting by Alice Neville