He hangs out in heritage buildings, has views on the copper trade in Thailand circa 1250 BC, and obtains fellowships at prestigious British universities. Best of all, he believes in Dunedin. Dr Hayden Cawte, a most unusual mix of academic excellence and business acumen, tells DavidLoughrey his story.
It's a great place to do business.
Even for the young, it has a supportive environment.
It has a great city council that supports its young entrepreneurs.
The much vaunted lifestyle is a cliche, but who cares? It's packed with young talent, and that young talent is flocking to its heritage precinct.
Those sentiments are enough to make those who take joy in peddling Dunedin's imminent demise choke on their narrative of despair.
They are the sentiments - the paraphrased sentiments at least - of Dr Hayden Cawte.
The 34-year-old property owner, developer, archaeologist, and former academic who juggled an expanding business with a PhD, returned to Dunedin in 2010 from overseas travels that included a stint at the University of Cambridge.
He returned because Dunedin is cool. Really.
''I wanted to be in New Zealand, and I wanted what I had in Cambridge, which was a great lifestyle around very intelligent people, with great opportunities; people that respected young people, I think, was a lot to do with it.
''The times I felt like that were actually back in Dunedin.''
The man behind New Zealand Heritage Properties Ltd has a portfolio of Dunedin heritage buildings and residential buildings around the country, not to mention some industrial land in Mosgiel.
His main focus is a consultant archaeology business that provides the legally required expertise for developers and owners dealing with pre-1900s sites with evidence of human habitation.
A clearly dominant interest Dr Cawte has is business - it is just one of a number of interests - and it could already be seen when he was a newly graduated student aged 20, about to begin post-graduate study.
''I'd just been given my PhD scholarship and it was $20,000 a year for three years.
''I took that letter of acceptance to a bank and said: `Look, I've got this guaranteed income for three years'.''
He asked what the bank would lend him. That figure was just $70,000, which paid for a ''slightly run-down house'' in Ashburton.
Where other students might be bogged down in study and social life, or perhaps just dimly aware of the concepts of mortgages and property ownership, he did the house up with the help of family, rented it, and paid it off.
Dr Cawte was raised in Ashburton, but ''always knew I wanted to come to Otago University''.
''I was particularly interested in business, but really my heart was always in something that was a bit more - what I saw at the time - interesting, which was archaeology.
His PhD gave him the opportunity to travel to Thailand with Dunedin archaeologist Prof Charles Higham, researching the historic effects and impact the end of the bronze age, and introduction of copper, had on society about 1250 BC.
But while the subject may be esoteric, the strictly practical business acumen he had already exhibited was clearly not far from the surface.
Spending time in the Thai village where he was working allowed him to learn enough of the language to interact with the local population.
They were interested in the archaeology, but more interested in whether their rice crop was going to fail.
''I developed a business exporting them machinery,'' Dr Cawte says.
That involved selling used farm machinery from New Zealand to a distributor in South East Asia - not a new concept, but ''the key was identifying customers''.
''It's all about access, and it can be difficult for those not in the know.''
And, just as he bought a house on the back of a small scholarship, he began what became a successful business with no funding.
''Right from the start, I said I can't afford to take the risk these tractors and machinery and things won't be paid for, so I need you to pay for them up front.''
Pulling that off came down to the relationships, and trust he had developed with the customers.
Dr Cawte was still doing his PhD, as the business took off.
As well, he won a fellowship to the University College London, analysing the materials he found during his archaeological work, worked as a consultant archaeologist in the Lao People's Democratic Republic for an Australian mining company, and gained another fellowship at the University of Cambridge.
It was towards the end of that period of study he considered his options, which included spending time in Bangkok or London.
''Probably [one] reason I came back here was I liked the thought of being very close to a university where you have lots of talented people.
''But, to be honest, it was more about how the business community and people actually dealt with someone that, at the time, was in their early 20s doing business.
''I had been doing business in Christchurch, in Canterbury, and you'd turn up to meetings and you'd meet someone, and it was like they'd look over the top of you thinking `when's the person coming'?''
''In Dunedin it never, ever felt like that at all.''
Dr Cawte's archaeology consultant business began about two and-a-half years ago, when a project manager friend asked for help.
Lecturing roles at the university dried up, the desire to follow that path faded, and with his wife-to-be an archaeologist, the shift of focus became ''a no-brainer''. It now employs eight people, ''five or six'' of whom are archaeologists.
Dr Cawte speaks ''quite highly'' of the DCC.
He received a grant from the economic development unit to travel to meet clients in Asia, and ''used that relatively little amount of money to travel to as many countries as I could''.
The result was sales in four of six countries he visited.
Somewhere in this 14 years of intense activity has been a stretch as chief executive of a software company, and two months ago, a Las Vegas marriage to wife Sheryl, performed by an Elvis impersonator.
His attitude to heritage precinct development is: ''People don't want the typical spaces that are available.
''We're following a niche to follow the people that want more character in their space.
''I haven't done the statistics, but I'd love to see what percentage of people working in this area are under 40.''
''I guarantee it would be a lot more than is working in other areas.
