Starting again in the 100-year-old Karitane family bach

Spreading her timber skirts on the hillside like a maiden aunt at a family picnic, the blue and white wooden house sits on a peninsula that used to be an island. "And probably will be again in 100 years," says Mark Grocott.

Normally based in Auckland, Mark and his wife Emma Farry have spent the past five years living and working (thanks to the local school bringing ultra-fast broadband to the community) in the small seaside settlement of Karitane, set in a rolling country near the mouth of the Waikouaiti River.

Driving the coast road from Dunedin, crisscrossing railway lines and the borders of time, winding back the clock to the 1970s, Emma in a carrycot, her parents were the house's proud new owners.

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