GOTTA LOTTA LIVIN’

Together with their four children and their partners, Vanessa and Richard Owen have created a family compound on a slice of coastal land in Northland

VANESSA AND RICHARD OWEN thought they had this business of life nicely sorted. Driftwood, an idyllic property on the Te Puna Inlet in the Bay of Islands, was their perfect home and, on the water’s edge, was an additional small cottage to share with holiday guests or family.

At the beginning of 2020, their three daughters were overseas and showing no signs of returning to live in New Zealand. Dione, Poppy and Milli (then 26, 24 and 20) worked on superyachts, mainly around the Mediterranean and Aegean and were based in Russia, Malta and Majorca, Spain.

In 2018, Vanessa and Richard, whose business since they arrived in New Zealand aboard their yacht 29 years ago, has been home renovations and accommodation, decided that if the girls wouldn’t come all the way home for holidays, then they’d take holidays to their girls. They bought a small cottage in an olive grove on a Greek island and structured their accommodation business, Driftwood Seaside Escapes, to close during the southern hemisphere winters so they could fly north for a daughter-filled summer.

It wasn’t such a leap into the unknown as the island had been home to Vanessa’s mother for 40 years. Vanessa (she and Richard are originally from England) and her siblings joined their mother on the island for many long and languid summer holidays in their youth. And for the glorious Ionian summer of 2019 (the year Vanessa turned 50), that was what happened. Richard, their then 12-year-old son Reef and Vanessa shared the summer with the three girls in the shade of those Greek olive trees and idly planned for the many, many more holidays they were sure would follow.

“Driftwood was going to be my home until my dying days, and our holiday home in Greece was where we’d go every winter to see the girls,” says Vanessa.

The pandemic brought the girls scurrying home from Europe to the safety of relatively pandemic-free New Zealand. Their partners came, too. Poor Reef, his life as an only child was suddenly upended, and he became the baby of the family with three big sisters in charge. The girls moved back into their childhood bedrooms, and the house rocked. Before long, it became apparent there wasn’t enough room for this loud and happy crowd to grow harmoniously into the suddenly toosmall corners of Driftwood.

“So, what do you do?” asks Vanessa, usually a 5am-riser with a daunting daily to-do list. “It’s level 4, so you lie in bed and trawl the internet looking at property for sale. And you look, and you look, and you look.” She had the feeling that her daughters might have lived out their overseas lives and be ready to settle back in New Zealand, and she longed to see if she could keep the family together on a property that would allow them all to flourish.

“I wanted to stay on our stretch of water, the Te Puna Inlet. It’s our home port, so it was a very small area, but I was looking for somewhere big enough to house four kids and their partners.

“We found it while lying in bed at level 4 — Rich and I on the internet — and we did all the negotiations at level 4. Then on the first day of level 3, 2020, we settled sight unseen.”

The little they knew about their new property came from recollections while onboard their yacht ( Barefoot) moored in a bay below it, from past visits to adjacent neighbours and hours of Google Earth snooping.

So that’s how the arrival of the Delta variant in New Zealand and the subsequent August 2021 lockdown found them: in a family compound on the edge of the sea with vegetable gardens and well-stocked cocktail cabinets. Richard, Vanessa and their tribe of 14 on just over 44 hectares with five houses (two usually used for paying guests), a dressage arena and stables (for the horse-mad Milli) and a newly planted vineyard of 62 sangiovese grapes acknowledging Richard’s recently celebrated 62nd birthday.

“We had the biggest bubble in the world and were extraordinarily lucky that our amazing young daughters gave up fabulous careers to join this family vision. Maybe not by choice, but they’re doing it. Dione, our workaholic, has designed and renovated a railway carriage tiny home herself. She runs our family café [The Fishbone in Kerikeri], and she runs our family kitchen in the main house [although the girls also have their own kitchens, guess where they eat the most?] Dione also maintains the family’s kitchen garden and is building a home renovation business.

“Poppy and her girlfriend Brogan have set up Handy Her, an amazing business that adds the female touch to the traditional handyman services. They also work remotely in recruitment, wearing corporate garb from the waist up and PJs below.

“Milli, at only 22, is a phenomenal horsewoman — her business is going ballistic breaking in wild horses, using the ocean to tame them, and teaching and connecting humans and horses.

FUTURE PERFECT

While Vanessa and Richard currently own the property, the next step will be to establish a long-term stake for each of their four children.

“This is something we probably should have done initially, but we wanted first to establish that it would work. That’s the most important thing about pulling together a family compound. It is not easy to live together as adults when your kids have been independent for years. “Our girls all left home really young — it’s more than a decade since Dione and Poppy lived with us. It is also very easy to fall into parent/child scenarios, which we try really hard not to. We needed to dive in headfirst and if it proves to work — and it is — tidy up the details.

“I love it that we can make day-to- day living easier for our kids as they are all such hard workers. What we have created has helped them have sweeter lives.” Vanessa says she can be a bit of a “grumpy rock”. She says she’s always there, but not always with good grace. “Family living at its best.”