Anabela Rea, Oct 24 2023: STUFF NZ
From Tokyo to Karamea: The Start of the Road at the End of the World’s Longest Cul de Sac.
Sanae and Paul Murray say life is sweet in this remote town of 700 people.
For Paul Murray, ex-journalist, art photographer, keen horticulturist, cultural enthusiast, real estate agent, former bed and breakfast proprietor, and family man; life in the little South Island town of Karamea couldn’t be sweeter.
Murray, 57, has been living in the isolated settlement of 700 residents cocooned between the Kahurangi National Park and the Tasman sea since 2003. With his wife, Sanae Murray, 41, joining him in 2004, they’ve chosen to raise their family there, to give their children a free-range lifestyle. Their happy and confident kids, Diva and Winston, are now almost 12 and just turned 9.
With one road in and one road out, Paul likens the town, including its peculiarities, mindset and biological diversity, to that of an island.
“We’re at the end of the world’s longest cul-de-sac, and a place we like to think of as the start of the road,” he say. “We’re 100km north of Westport, basically, on a no-exit road.’
Paul first visited Karamea in 2000 when he was living in Japan, working as a journalist and art photographer.
“I came to New Zealand on a holiday in about 2000, and looked at a map and I thought ‘Wow, the town right up there.’ I was driving around the south, and I thought we’re gonna look at that. And so I drove up here and just thought, ‘What an incredible place.’ And I just fell in love with it.”
He’s not the only one to drive down the no-exit road and decide to never leave. Paul says there are “lots of stories about people doing that”, including a Canadian friend, who has since died, who came to Karamea for a picnic and ended up staying for 40 years.
When Paul returned to Tokyo, he says he couldn’t stop thinking about Karamea. The following year, he bought 32 hectares of bush that borders the national park, then went back to Tokyo to work to pay for it. Two years later he moved there permanently, with Sanae following not long after.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” he says. So what’s so great about Karamea?
“It is a very stunning place,” says Paul. “It’s very much like a geographical island. You’ve got the Kahurangi National Park on three sides and then it’s sealed in by the Tasman Sea.”
“It’s the warmest, driest place on the West Coast, because it’s the furthest north. And interestingly, we’re actually north of Wellington. Because in maps the South Island is a bit skewed, we’re actually just north of Wellington, and we’re east of Timaru. So it’s a bit of a local joke: Where are you from, mate? Oh, just north of Wellington. Oh, the Kāpiti coast? No, no. Karamea.’
Because it’s remote, Paul says the residents are independent, resilient, and “interested in sustainable living and growing food”.
It’s a world away from the bustling streets of Tokyo, where Paul and Sanae first met. For her, moving to Karamea meant a new language, a new culture, a new lifestyle … and directly disobeying her father’s wishes.
Long since settled now, the family enjoy weekly calls on a Sunday to Sanae’s parents in Tokyo, and go to visit every year. They speak Japanese on the Zoom calls but English around the house.
“Speaking Japanese to my wife is pointless because her English is far better than my Japanese,” Paul says.
The family have their own little farm that includes 1.6ha of grazing sheep and 2000m² of productive gardens.
Before Covid, the couple used to run motels in Karamea, including a 10-bedroom 1960s ex-maternity hospital which they operated as a bed and breakfast. Paul estimates they served up 2,500 meals a year using their own garden’s produce.
The ease of growing all manner of fruits and vegetables is one of the key things that encouraged Paul, who has a degree in horticulture, to move here.
“It’s warm and sunny, and you can grow almost anything here. I was absolutely astounded by the range of different crops people can grow here. They can grow bananas.”
His garden includes plants you wouldn’t expect to be viable on the West Coast, such as macadamia nuts, Ecuadorian coconuts, feijoas, passion-fruit, and blueberries.
Paul’s long-term goal is to become a kawakawa “pepper baron.” A collaborative partnership is already underway with a local cheesemaker to create a sensational kawakawa-infused cheese. Watch this space.
His career in abstract nature photography began with a Tokyo exhibition of holiday photos from New Zealand. Far from the “snaps next to a giant gumboot” that his friends expected, the images were artistic captures, a lens into a landscape that Paul loves.
Pushed on by his friends to exhibit, he says the experience was unexpectedly “a phenomenal success”.
“It was unbelievable, the jammiest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he says.
“So many people came, we had to close the exhibition down. And we had to employ a security guard to let a certain number of people in at a time. There was a line outside the restaurant for a block and a half.”
“And then because of the line, it attracted media attention, and suddenly, all these journalists were turning up wanting to talk to the artist and I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, is that me?’ Suddenly, I’m an artist.”
“I ended up in Japanese photo magazines, and then in the popular press in Tokyo at the time. And from then on, I was just doing exhibitions all the time, to the point where I kind of burned out a bit. I lost the passion for what I was doing, because I ended up sort of feeling like I was doing it for other people rather than myself.”
He met Sanae at one of the exhibitions, so it’s safe to say the experience was still resoundingly positive.
Paul has returned to creating art in Karamea, and is also an enthusiastic supporter of the arts community there. Sanae has produced 11 pop-up exhibitions in the town and he estimates that around 10% of Karamea’s residents are artists.
Will the Murrays ever move? Not a chance.
They’ve hosted multiple Japanese television crews and an Italian documentary team, all curious to learn why they choose to live in a place some consider to be the ends of the earth.
Their “ramshackle, work in progress, building site of a house” is a 100-year-old, three-bedroom villa, at the western end of Karamea.
The town has all the amenities that Paul considers to be important, from “one of the best schools in New Zealand” to a Vidal Sassoon hairdresser, a supermarket, heated swimming pool, hardware store, gas station, cafe-restaurant, and “excellent medical care” available via the local nurses, with the rescue helicopter 20 minutes away for emergencies.
“It’s been 20 years I’ve been here, we’ve done a lot of stuff, and it’s been a wonderful, wonderful journey,” says Paul.
“I still wake up every morning, look across and see my wife is still sleeping and open up the curtains, look at and watch the sun rise over the forest and mountain peaks of the Kahurangi National Park, and think, ‘Shit, I’ve won life’s lottery.’”
“This place is my Shangri-la. Honestly, I love it. Love living here. Don’t want to go anywhere else.”
The Rongolian Star 
Kudos for the Karamea Summer Holiday Programme
Off the Top of My Head
By Paul Murray
With financial support from the Community Led-Development Programme (CLDP), local volunteers have provided Karamea kids with a wonderful schedule of exciting, intellectually stimulating and practical activities this summer. From cooking, Stand Up Paddleboarding, yoga hula-hooping, art classes, hiking, mountain biking, music and a raft of other great events that have kept our children entertained, active and engaged this summer, as a parent, I offer a huge thank you to all concerned.
We all love our children, but the summer holidays are very long, and many of us have work commitments that conflict with the expectations of the youngsters and their need for action and invigorating pursuits to fill their sunny days. The Summer Activities for Kids and Youth in Karamea 23/24 has been a great help to both parents and their offspring. Throw in Little Wanganui Beach Day, the Karamea Show, Irish Dancing, Christmas, gymnastics, pickle ball, volleyball, badminton in the new hall, the heated swimming pool and all the superb outdoor activities on offer in the region and this summer has been jam-packed with awesomeness for our kids and the community.
The challenge of our age as parents in this rapidly changing world of emergent technologies is to encourage our children to use their own creative powers rather than drawing on the imaginations of others in the digital media-verse. It is also to provide our kids with a thorough understanding of social ethics and moral codes to guide them through the challenges they will eventually face on their own later in life. Life is busy these days with many parents both working to provide for their family, so the summer activities programme has been a marvellous help to keep our kids engaged in wholesome activities that inspire, motivate, entertain and help them grow.
About a decade ago, there was an essay competition at Karamea Area School, and the students read out their compositions. Somewhat disturbingly, many of the narrations were on dark subjects like bullying, depression and suicide, which is a big problem in New Zealand society, especially among our young. New Zealand has the second highest adolescent suicide rate among OECD (wealthy) countries in the world.
Much has changed since then, and the Karamea Area School is in a much better place in terms of management and the dedication of the teaching staff; the facilities have vastly improved, and the initiative of the Karamea community to provide our children with inspiring holiday activity programmes has really turned this troubling situation around. I suspect that if we reran the essay competition, the outcome would be much more optimistic.
Much gratitude to the team of local leaders, many stepping up for the first time, for sharing their skills, equipment and time to lead various activities. The response was overwhelming when Liz Kerslake called for volunteers to host summer events and activities. It enabled her to create a full timetable for our youngsters this summer.
Massive thanks to Liz Kerslake, the Karamea community and the following folk for their dedication and belief in our youth: Deborah Wagner, Jodi Goodwin, Lena Fischbach, Aby Chalmers, Emily Klaver, Angela Cronin, Alwyn, Jackie Christie, Harry Bretherington, Linda Brownie, Mark Cloughley, Saelyn Guyton, Emilie, Sander, Cole Simpson, Fifi, Tony Ibbotson, and Rosalie Sampson deserve immense gratitude. These individuals have contributed to activities ranging from mountain hikes and artistic endeavours to music sessions, cooking classes, and even car maintenance tutorials.
51 local children and some grateful visitors actively participated in the programme activities. There were a few issues with the weather, but everything worked out fine with a bit of rescheduling. Some no-shows occurred, and the expected numbers for some events/activities were lower than expected. This was disappointing for the volunteers and organisers who had offered their time and energy freely, so let’s make sure to attend and honour commitments in future to ensure this programme can continue to support our kids and their development and the welcome respite the programme affords parents over the summer break.
Thank you again to the organisers of the excellent summer schedule, the parents who car-pooled to help get the kids to the activities, those who organised, volunteered and supervised, and Karamea Community Incorporated, who saw value in and supported the programme.
The CLDP funding runs until September this year, so we hope to receive local sponsorship for the 24/25 programme. Liz is already cooking up some exciting Youth Club experiences this year and is looking forward to welcoming a new wave of 13+ youngsters into the fold.
We’re so fortunate to live in an outdoor activity paradise and to have so many willing adults giving up their time and expertise to support our kids. If wealth could be measured in children’s tired, happy smiles, Karamea parents are more affluent than Elon Musk!
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