The Bourke family's Harwood property is not a holiday home, nor is it a bach - it is a crib. David Loughrey finds it lives up to that name to the point it could almost be used as a definition of the Southern family getaway.
Somewhere in Gavin and Irene Bourke's Harwood crib is what used to be a wall partition.
"It's under the carpet here somewhere," Gavin says, feeling around with his foot for the former wall line.
The wall, of course is gone, the room expanded to a large kitchen, and a mostly finished area attached to the back of the building.
"Now of course, we've got three bedrooms, a toilet and a shower," he says proudly of that addition. And that's not all.
A few metres across what was a particularly dry lawn just after Christmas, is the former Musselburgh School dental nurses' clinic, snapped up in a deal with the school where Irene worked as a teacher for 30 years.
The couple picked it up for nothing, in return for removing it and cleaning up.
That building, still sporting the artwork inspired by the children of the school, has been simply remodelled inside with two bedrooms for the kids.
Further out the back is the former St Clair Salt Water Pool ticket office, which Gavin built when he worked as a builder and joiner in the firm Gillies and Bourke.
He owned the business with Duke Gillies, a man well known as the godfather of Otago surf life-saving, who died in 2002.
When the salt water pool was upgraded, the small building was popped on a trailer, and now has a more domestic use as a bunk room at the Bourkes' holiday residence.
Perhaps "holiday residence" is too grand a title.
As Gavin describes it, the real estate there is "a proper crib".
While the house originally had a coal range, that has been replaced with something a little more modern, and a Sky dish on the roof pointed to other modern comforts that family had added.
But the immediately appealing rough and ready nature of every structure on the property proves Gavin's point.
Additions to the main house, of course, were built by Gavin and two sons-in-law press-ganged into the role of builder's helpers.
In fact, one of Gavin's daughters claims they did most of the work while Gavin played golf down the road at Otakou, though that argument may have to stay unresolved.
Gavin's view on that matter was "someone's got to be the boss".
"I might have been away playing golf for three or four hours ..."
Gavin says there is still some plaster-stopping to do in the bedrooms, but there is no real hurry.
The family has owned the property since 1970; the renovations have been ongoing for 41 years, when there is time during weekends and holidays.
"It all happens at Christmas and Easter," Gavin says.
Gavin and Irene married in 1962, and had four children: Nicki, David, Deborah and Catherine, now aged between 32 and 46, with six grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Holidays too far away were not a financial possibility at the time, and with three children under 5 years old, the couple rented what was then a tiny cottage for Christmas and Easter for a couple of years.
The property came on the market in 1970, and they managed to buy it for the princely sum of $900.
The small village just 25 minutes from the city was, and is, "a completely different world", Gavin says.
"At low tide it's a 100 acre playground," he said of the harbour just down the road.
"At high tide it's a 100 acre swimming pool."
The couple clearly remember the early years of their residence at the crib - when more of a community holiday feel dominated - fondly.
The village used a have a big sports event on New Year's Day, for instance, at the Harwood reserve, with everything from running, to sack races for the kids.
"The guys used to mow a track for people to run on."
There was a contest between Harwood and competitors from what locals then called "The Beach" - residents from further towards Otakou.
"That went on for a long time," Gavin said.
"They used to have housie for the kids in the local hall."
Irene said another highlight was a twice-weekly visit from a "fruit and vege man", who sold goods from a truck.
During the past 40 years, things, of course, changed.
"When the kids were little, there were lots of other kids to play with," Irene remembers.
"Then, there were lots of cribs."
Of the about 148 houses in Harwood, most were now permanent residences.
While that meant less of a holiday feel, and the New Year sports event had gone by the by, Gavin said the family still hosted between 30 and 50 people for New Year celebrations.
The family has never lived at the crib, being content to stay at their Tainui home and keep Harwood for holidays and weekends.
When the family bought the property, that was "every weekend from Labour Weekend to Easter."
The property was originally covered with lupins, but at a couple of metres at a time, the plants were hacked back, and replaced with grass, as new structures expanded the number of beds available.
As children grew to teenagers, there was something of a loss of interest, but as children became parents themselves, new generations began to take the opportunity of a nearby holiday home.
And those holidays sound like the stuff of an idyllic childhood.
Irene gave the official version of what there was to do in the area, which involved the likes of visits to the albatross colony at Taiaroa Head, Natures Wonders, and Larnach Castle.
Nicki remembers what the children actually did, which was mucking about in canoes, playing in the lupins, and "a big tyre swing" that evidently gave its share of entertainment.
"The kids spent hours at the beach," Irene said, looking under rocks for crabs and other sea creatures, or at night, floundering with torches.
And Gavin, of course, does have a dinghy out the back with an outboard motor, not far from the bus and caravan that have been brought to the property, and which his parents used in years gone by.
The crib, he says, is a property with "virtually just the basics".
"It's set up with the fridge and the range, and you can walk in and sleep as many as you want.
"It's still a basic crib.
"Yeah, and it's going to stay that way too."
Harwood
• On the Otago Peninsula, 25 minutes from Dunedin.
• On the shore of the Otago harbour.
• Short drive to Taiaroa Head albatross colony, Natures Wonders nature tours, Larnach Castle, the Otakou marae and the Otakou Golf Club.
• Eclectic mix of cribs and more-permanent residences.
• Walking, boating, fishing and night floundering.
