DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES.

I've noticed quite a few changes in the area where I live.

We started coming up here 20 years ago when my sister built a holiday house at Urquarts Bay.
It was my first experience of Whangarei Heads as, although I'd been to Northland before, getting to the Heads is sort of off the main drag. You have to turn right at Whangarei and go out on a peninsular ending in Bream Head.

In 1999 it seemed that most of the accomodation was holiday houses for people who lived elsewhere, along with elderly people and alternative life-stylers.

In 2009 when we bought or house here things had changed a bit but our observation suggested that about 40% of the houses were holiday houses with absentee owners and that there was a shifting of balance from older, retired residents to younger ones with jobs in Whangarei (25 minutes drive away).

In 2020 most of the accommodation is used all year round whether owned or rented and, although there are still a lot of holiday properties (one of my immediate neighbours lives in Auckland and stays up here every second or third weekend), the shift has gone to permanent residents vs casual and younger vs older.

There has been a lot of new build as well, bringing increased population. I don't have numbers for Whangarei Heads residency but 2019 census figures show, for Whangarei and district:

1999 - 69,000

2009 - 79,000

2019 - 96,000

The increase in 20 years is 40%.
I guess that Whangarei Heads increase is the same if not more given that it is a more desirable location than Whangarei itself.


A lot of the new residents in the area are what I call the Builders.*

The Builders (or Tradies as some people call them) are the youngish (late 20s through late 40s) guys who work for themselves or for others in building, carpentry, landscaping, painting, tree-felling, plumbing and related light-industry trades. In a previous time in this country they would have been educated in technical colleges or through the New Zealand apprenticeship scheme but a National government of yesteryear saw fit to get rid of those. Nowadays these guys have gained their skills any which way, usually by working for big building companies in Australia and go out on their own not unlike the way that cowboys did in the Wild West of America.

They are usually named Todd or Jason, Jayden or Scott and rarely have any names beyond one or two syllables. Even so the names generally change to Toddy, Scotty, Jaydo and Jase when addressed by their friends. Toddy, Scotty, Jaydo and Jase often are married to Chloe, Gaylene, Lisa and Tanya and are now 'settling' in the Heads. They have children named Zack, Tyler, Kiranda and Jazlyn and plan to buy or build their own houses once the old retirees die or bugger off.

Toddy, Scotty, Jaydo and Jase seem to have a liking for grunty utes and can be seen in Ford Rangers, Nissan Navaras, Holden Colorados, Mitsubishi Tritons and any other vehicles that have big motors and bigger wheels. They like to drive these monsters right up the arse of anyone in front of them and to pass slow traffic on corners and on double yellow lines. This is to demonstrate how tough they are and that silly rules made up by the oldies don't apply to them.

I don't like these people.

It may be that they are here to stay (unfortunately) but maybe in another 10 years these idiots will have grown a bit older and wiser and will moderate their behaviour. Most likely by then they will be complaining about the younger set moving into their neighbourhood.





















* WARNING. We at The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ reserve the right to be self-opinionated, prejudicial, judgemental and stand-offish and make no apology for that.