Having moved a lot in recent years we’ve been lucky with our views. To the left, the outlook we enjoyed for two years at our home in the Bay of Plenty. When I was offered a post at Tauranga Art Gallery, we reached out to Sumer Gallery’s Dan du Bern, our only art-world acquaintance in the city then, with the usual queries: Where should we live? Where can Sonya find a studio? To our surprise, he swiftly connected us with a collector who, as luck would have it, owned a purpose-built artist’s studio in Papamoa Hills. We signed up before setting foot on site, based on a few lousy phone pics, which included this extraordinary view.

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The house we arrived to was full of contradictions. Built for the owner, a Goldsmith’s Art School graduate who lived between London and Tauranga, it was clearly designed to be studio-first, dwelling-second. It consisted of three rooms: a carpeted office (our bedroom); a similarly proportioned room containing spartan essentials (kitchen, laundry and bathroom); and a large double-height studio-gallery (which also served as our lounge and dining room). The real action in this otherwise quiet, rural setting was outside as tūī, magpies and rosellas fought for dominance among flax and pines, and a serene vista stretched from Mt Maunganui to Papamoa Beach.

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We loved many things about Tauranga, but we were consistently drawn back to the larger urban centres, and after not too long, planned a return to Tāmaki Makaurau. Perhaps for fear we would never be able to get back into the Auckland housing market, during our eight-year-hiatus we held onto our first home, a modest, city-fringe apartment in Parnell. To the right is the view from this dwelling. Like our previous residence, it’s our little apartment’s greatest asset, even as we trade quiet beaches for a never-sleeping port, and the murmur of neighbours reverberates over the chatter of rosellas.

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