It took me quite some time to write this post yesterday and I'll explain later on....but on a recent road-trip through Opua this building caught my eye on the way home. We drove down a small road and I was able to take a photo of this gem.
According to my research, and there wasn't much out there, this was originally the old Stephenson's Store on the waterfront which was a 2 storied combination of a boarding house and store. This is on 6 Beechy Street but apparently numbers 4-7 on this road were purchased by the Bank of NZ in 1883 and a couple of years later 2 retail stores appeared, the one above and one which was a bakery.
It is now being used as luxury rental accommodation and the rooms cost $110 nzd per night, there are some lovely reviews being left about it too.
Back to the first sentence. I often wonder how reliant we are on the internet. Since we've lived here in the last 6 months our internet throughout the far north has been cut off twice through no fault of our own. The first time about a month ago apparently someone accidentally cut through a fibre cable in another town, it took about 2 days to repair but our provider gave us free gigs through our mobile phones so we were able to connect through a hot spot. This time a road slip in Whangarei was the cause and the contractors had to repair the fibre cable for a 1km distance.
So how relevant is technology and the internet these days? Quite relevant I've found out - mind blowing considering when I was growing up we didn't need it for entertainment. We made our own and it was mostly through visiting friends, going bike riding, catching the bus places etc.
I wonder if we would ever be able to live without it? hmm...
