Living remotely on the West Coast

People often ask me on the boat what is it like to live so remotely. 

I sometimes have a chuckle, only because where I grew up was so much more ‘remote’ than the region of Haast.  My answer goes like this; “We don’t’ worry about running out of toilet paper, we are more focused on the fresh fruit and vegetables. 

The truck comes twice a week, so it is a good idea to make the 46KM round trip to the one shop soon after it arrives if I want to buy those or make sure I get milk”.

You can learn more about my upbringing on the about us page, but needless to say I feel like Haast is just the right mix of remote vs people and amenities.

In the big scheme of things, I feel like we are connected as a community because we still call in and see each other and have face-to-face conversations. 

This is because until 2018 we didn’t have a single mobile phone tower and even now our coverage is patchy but with things like Starlink internet, communication has greatly improved.  People generally will visit the supermarket every 6 weeks to 3 months which is a 6-hour round trip, trick here is to leave really early because the shopping lists are long and usually contain items for the neighbours. 

We are a population of 249 people over a 100km distance so we help each other as much as we can, we trade labour by helping each other and we share food.  I look forward to my leg of venison from the neighbours that I can then make into sausages. 

We always have fish in the freezer because we like to fish for our food and I grow lots of vegetables.  There is a local market gardener who provides lettuce all year round and we look forward to summer because they then provide more variety….strawberries and watermelons, a real treat. 

So we don’t worry about the loo paper because we are used to making do with what we have, there is no racing to the shop for last-minute items, we will just improvise instead.