North Shore

I make my coffee, I make my little AeroPress, and I get my journal, and I get my Bible, and I sit down, and I feel holier than thou for 45 minutes while I have my devotional time with Jesus, and then they come back sweaty.

Um, for the last several years, we live on the North Shore, and because we live on the North Shore, we drive past the Auckland Marathon every year as we come to church.

And, and I drive past people doing the bridge, and I look at them, and they look miserable.

[laughs]

And Labour's Willow-Jean Prime makes four.

This election, she's switched from contesting the general seat to Te Tai Tokerau, an electorate that takes in North Shore and parts of West Auckland right up to Cape Reinga.

OK, just checking.

It's all good.

And of course a lot of communications were heading south, but we found as it went much further, as it went into operation with the digital, there's a lot of digital communications between different parts of Auckland.

so you find the utilities transmit digital information say from way up on the North Shore up to the tower and down to the South Auckland so from that point of view it does a lot of local communications and of course the radio stations operate from there from the tower here as well as long distance communications with the fitting into the overall communications that people like to broadcast people use so it's got lots of functions that it does which is which is in addition to just the tourist facility

What other buildings in Auckland have you created that we might know

about? Well, we designed the event centre down on the waterfront, the one with the wavy roof for the City Council, which was a lot of fun to design because it's multi-function and it's been operating now for probably, I'm not sure, 10 years or so at least.

is crazy.

You haven't been to the North Shore? How old are you? You've got to be six years old.

You haven't been to the city?

You better not be bloody 40 years old, by the way.

Um, it's a brand new open water swimming event in New Zealand.

It's based at Pūpūke Moana, which is Lake Pūpūke, um, on Auckland's North Shore.

Um, it's set in a freshwater volcanic crater lake, um, which oddly, a lot of people that live in Auckland don't know it exists because it's hidden away behind the suburbia.

Um, but it's been, it's had a special place in my heart that, um, I've grown up in Milford, um, just on, on the side of Lake Pūpūke.

Um, used to swim at, at, uh, North Shore Swimming Club at, at Takapuna Pools there, and we used to go and jump off the jetty or swim across it and back.

Um, and then later in, later in life, sort of jumping off the jetty, doing bombs and manus and, and all of that.

So, um, yeah.

A lot of people row in it, kayak in it, and I think a lot of people thought you can't swim in it or it's not swimmable.

He is one of these people that gets out there and plants stuff and looks after the community.

Richard is chair of the Centennial Park Bush Society in Campbell's Bay up in Auckland's North Shore.

And for decades, his group has been weeding, trapping, planting, dealing with the council on all sorts of stuff, raising community awareness, and generally making the community more green and nicer to be in.

Richard is with us now.

Sure.

Well, I'm lucky to live in one of the most beautiful parts of Auckland.

It's on Auckland's North Shore.

Campbell's Bay Beach is a stunning beach.