‘No Gumboots Allowed’: Inside NZ's most legendary singles ball
The Spinoff Daily, Wednesday March 5
Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily.
Today on The Spinoff: the 2025 Ockham Book Awards shortlist, what Trump’s tarriffs mean for New Zealand and a history of delightful diplomatic gifts.
“The anchor of Maui’s canoe, Rakiura is Aotearoa’s southernmost settlement and a one hour ferry ride from Bluff. Doug Beck is a bit hazy on the dates, but thinks he was in his 30s when he moved there. ‘I went over on holiday for a weekend,’ he says ‘and never left.’ He was immediately struck by the friendliness of the people and the beauty of the place. ‘The scenery is just absolutely off the richter scale.’
A self-confessed mischief-maker, Doug says he wasn’t well liked when he first showed up and was even kicked off the island after getting involved in a few too many brawls at the pub, but he later returned and made it his home. Like many of the locals, he became a jack of all trades working on the wharf, in the garage, on a salmon farm and eventually at the recycling centre, where he turned the rubbish dump into ‘something really nice’.
There may have been 400 permanent residents on the island, but Doug says you only ever saw about 100 of them if you were lucky. During the summer, visitors would bring more buzz to the place, but the winter months were quiet with a capital Q. And the downside to a small remote community based around the fishing industry was that there was only a small sprinkling of sheilas. Doug reckons there were four times as many single men on the island as there were women.
‘There was unquestionably a female drought,’ he says with a laugh. ‘And those girls that were there weren’t too flash on any of the local guys.’”
“I would love to have more money for paying off my mortgage. Other than that, I don’t think it'd change my life or my behaviour much.”
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