Harvest holidays

A dream break that doesn’t cost a cent

A rejuvenating, relaxing holiday – even one as special as your honeymoon – doesn’t necessarily have to cost a fortune. Hana Miller explains how, as newlyweds, she and her husband chanced upon an idyllic holiday worth more than money

Photography Charlie McKay

What constitutes the perfect honeymoon – or any indulgent holiday, for that matter? Does it have to mean paying top dollar to laze on the beach all day doing nothing?

We all know that weddings can be stressful, which is why the perfect honeymoon is the most relaxing one. If you decide on a conventional romantic honeymoon in some exotic spot in a deluxe hotel suite replete with heart-shaped bathtub, rose petals and candlelit dinners, you could risk spending this precious time together worrying about how you’ll pay the credit card bill once the champagne and strawberries have run out. In which case, this may not be the best way to start a marriage.

Get creative, and you might just find a romantic getaway in the least expected of places.

My husband Jacob and I have family flung across the globe. Having made New Zealand our home, we also chose it as the place for our wedding. For many of our faraway family and friends, we might as well have married in Antarctica. So to make the most of the long trip here, many extended their visits to incorporate some time for travelling around the country. One friend came early to work as a volunteer through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), an international network of hosts willing to take in travellers interested in experiencing organic lifestyles.

When she signed up as a member, our friend received a book listing all the hosts in the country, including descriptions of the kinds of accommodation, food and experiences on offer in exchange for between four and six hours of work a day. Her book was filled with multicolour pen marks, noting which places she thought sounded good and which didn’t. Many sounded like the stuff dreams are made of – blueberry farms, waterfalls, citrus orchards, log cabins and natural springs.

One property, marked with a big yellow star, was a farm called Waiheke Blue, set amid 120 acres of regenerating bush on Waiheke Island, which is in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland. The island is famed for its vineyards, but this farm grows organic lavender, geraniums and olives for oil, as well as grapes. We found ourselves very tempted by the description of Waiheke Blue.

And the photos were enticing: an image of a little, rustic thatch-roofed gazebo perched among rows of bright purple lavender bushes won us over. Jacob and I had been so caught up in planning our wedding that we hadn’t given a thought to what we would do afterwards. Taking time out somewhere lovely in exchange for putting in a few hours’ work to help keep the place beautiful sounded perfect.

We arrived at Waiheke Blue after a ferry ride in the morning sun, a drive through rolling hills and a walk along a forest trail under tall trees, ending at a hillside of blooming lavender bushes with bees buzzing in the fresh, fragrant air. A couple of wild peacocks heard us coming and dashed away in a flurry of electric-blue and sea-green feathers. In the middle of this charming scene was a sweet little cottage.

We stood dumbstruck, holding our bags, amazed that complete strangers had invited us to share this slice of paradise. Soon we were being shown to our room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the vineyards spreading out from behind the house. “This is the best room in the house,” we were told. They weren’t kidding.

Eleanor Bauarschi and an ex-partner built the house and developed the property after years of corporate life in the city. As we stood in the kitchen with its view of the lavender field, Eleanor explained why she took in WWOOFers like us.“It keeps me in touch with the rest of the world,” she said.

In exchange for our stay and delicious organic home-cooked meals made with produce picked straight from the garden, we would do four hours of work a day, divided between caring for the lavender bushes, restocking some of the products, and helping to harvest the last of the season’s cabernet and merlot grapes. To us, this sounded like The Life.

We spent most mornings helping Eleanor with the never-ending tasks in the garden: mulching, weeding, pruning, planting and clipping. On rainy days we made bath potions and floral waters from the essential lavender oils. Because we had so much to learn, the four hours always passed quickly and, before we knew it, a delicious lunch would be served on the verandah. Then the rest of the day was ours. We whiled away the afternoons until sunset on one of the island’s countless beaches. We took long walks to pick fruit, lazed in the sun on our incredibly scenic patio and talked about how we would like to make this kind of life our own. It was the perfect honeymoon.

Best of all were the days when we were needed to help pick grapes in the vineyard. All the families on the property would get together, some bringing their friends, and we’d work our way leisurely along the rows and rows of grapevines, chatting and eating sweet grapes straight off the vine. Lunch was an elaborate picnic spread of home-made bread, jams, cheeses, fruit and fresh lime cordial, eaten while sitting on a grassy knoll overlooking hills that rolled down toward the ocean.

At the end of the day, anyone who was game would jump into the vat of grapes and stomp away while others bucketed more in. This obviously wasn’t as novel for some as it was for me, and I had to hide my enthusiasm with a casual “Well, if nobody else is going to do it”. But the truth is there is no sensation more luxurious than that of thousands of ripe grapes squishing between your toes. It’s apparently the tried-and-true way of making the best wine – toe jam jokes aside.

On the last day of grape picking, we celebrated with dinner around the outdoor wood-fired pizza oven, which was built in the middle of a small amphitheatre. Most of us lounged around sampling wines and listening to others play the guitar, while the expert cooks passed around a seemingly-endless selection of delicious pizzas straight from the oven. There were prosciutto pizzas, peppered tuna pizzas, feta and olive pizzas, and, for dessert, pizza bread topped with warm cabernet sauvignon grapes and fennel seeds. This was the icing on the cake, a delightful meal and an experience you wouldn’t get in the finest of fine restaurants.

Our three-week stay was an unforgettable experience, one that many tourists to Waiheke Island might have paid big bucks to get – but only received a superficial version. We had discovered a lifestyle that suited us and had a taste of what it would be like to work together toward that dream. We left re-energised and ready to start our life together. It was time well spent. Although we had stayed for almost a month, we hadn’t spent a cent.