Thursday, March 27, 2008

Bach Beauty


Wikipedia will tell you that a bach (pronounced batch) is the name given to a small, modest New Zealand holiday home, usually located at a beach. The alternative South Island name is a ‘crib.’ But for many New Zealanders a bach is very much more than a simple dwelling; it is a part of growing up, an iconic part of our lifestyle and culture swollen with memory and event – especially from 1950-1970. You don’t find so many truly humble baches these days – the ones made out of recycled materials and furnished with cast-off curtains and old chairs. They’ve been superceded by trendy new holiday homes with hot and cold running everything. I found these ones at Boulder Bay, a stony little horseshoe with less than a dozen baches in total, just around the coast from Christchurch. There’s no road access; you either walk the coastal track from Taylor’s Mistake Beach, or you descend the steep, narrow track from Godley Head.

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