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Where the heart is A hymn to home

As Kiwis grow more acquainted with their homes than ever, writer Lucy Revill, pictured right, considers what makes a home.

Igrew up in the beige Wellington suburb of Karori, but always wanted to live in a big city. My Mum is English and my Dad is Australian. They raised my brother and me like mini (eccentric) Brits. It was the BBC, cups of tea and Forever Ealing black and white films.

At school, teased for my ‘‘fake English accent’’, I was often in the library, reading books about plucky heroines living in London or America. Life seemed to be going on somewhere else whether it was New York City, London, or Paris.

I thought that to be a Kiwi you had to ‘‘get’’ our culture, but I didn’t like the All Blacks or watch Shortland Street, so I never felt at home. I always thought I’d go overseas and New Zealand was just where I happened to be for now.

This changed when I arrived at my first real home on Hawker St, Mount Victoria. I was 22, living with two DJs, working nights at a bar on Courtenay Place. As I drifted through to second semester, with a promising contract to work at a large law firm on the horizon, I desperately wanted to leave New Zealand. Friends were going overseas and writing travel blogs, but there was nothing for young women like me, not going anywhere, hungry for life, experience and stories.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I could write. I decided to set up an anti-travel blog, interviewing Wellingtonians about their lives, their homes. My only criteria was I had to be interested in the person and they had to currently live (or formerly have lived) in Wellington. I started to connect with people that had established a strong sense of home in their chosen city: the entrepreneurs, the artists, the creatives and fashion designers. It struck me that many of them were not born here. People actually wanted to come here, to Wellington. I wondered why.

Over five years, week by week, I began recording conversations with people I met – some famous, some unknown. I would often visit them in their homes – some permanent, some temporary, often rented, usually in the city. The results changed my ideas about home – and myself. I started to think about the meaning of home, not only my home, but what home was for others.

It taught me a lot about living. Home was more than bricks and mortar. It was an extension of people’s personalities. They made an effort to surround themselves with things they loved and used these to express their personal values, whether that was zero waste, beauty, community or creativity.

One Kiwi-Canadian I’d met through volunteering at the charity Kaibosh, Nicole, had turned her flat in Mount Victoria into a cosy bohemian space with partner Achilles. They’d made room for all the things that they loved in life, setting up a studio for Achilles to play drums and have band practice, and a studio for constructing mosaics in the garden. It was full of indoor and outdoor plants, band posters from Nicole’s time in the music industry and unexpected playful elements, like green toy soldiers doing yoga on the top of their toilet. Her ginger cat was never far.

Comedian Alice Brine lived in a flat-share across the road from a former diner. Her weatherboard house enclosed all the warmth of a flat with majority female occupancy. Alice spoke at a hundred miles a minute. She’d put posters and clippings up on the wall, terrariums and birdcages, and a large formica kitchen table permanently littered with several Macbooks. Her home, like her mind, was always open for business. Mismatched chairs, pens, notepads, bulbs growing in glass jars, and close proximity to coffee were essential.

I often ate well when I visited these homes. When I interviewed Russell Silverwood, founder of Nocar Cargo, in his pink Newtown villa he fed me spicy chickpea soup with homemade focaccia and heavenly garlic butter. I drank from a Hamburglar mug. We took photos of him frolicking in his greenhouse, or playfully sitting in the back of his bike courier, pulling his leg up into a contorted stretch.

Nutritionist Shelley Gawith was temporarily living in her parents’ house in Te Aro , as she was setting up her business and still recovering from a crippling immune illness. Nevertheless, she prepared dukka-infused cauliflower, lentil salad and fritters.

Although many of them have now scattered to different places and different houses, these people frequently invested in where they were living at the time they were living there, even when it wasn’t a permanent home. From your art to your garden to creating a space for hobbies – investing in your home is investing in your own personal growth, every day. Your home – the way you choose to live – is what makes up the building blocks of life.

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2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282071985037391

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