>Small-town New Zealand, actually.

And Tasman doesn’t even qualify as a town. It’s more of a cluster of houses, with a school that covers Year 1 through 8, a winery and Steve Fullmer’s pottery.

They used to have a store, but that got burned down at the beginning of the month and the two ladies who’d just taken it over lost everything

So the town got together and put on a fundraiser last week.

They had a couple of people singing on a flatbed truck, hotdogs, hamburgers, raffles, wine and beer, one guy selling apples, people going round with a hat and school kids selling lemons.

And an auction.

People donated what that had and what they could – 2 hours of gardening, an All Black shirt impregnated with genuine All Black sweat ($400 or so),paintings from seriously good artists ($1000+), a family portrait sitting by Elspeth Collier, one of NZ’s top magazine photographers, weekends away at luxury lodges, olive oil, wine, makeup sessions……

Tasman has about 100 inhabitants and loads more of us turned up and together we raised over $13,000.

That’s what I really really like about this place