Source: Radio New Zealand
Westhaven Estate was formerly a luxury lodge, in Mangarākau, Tasman. The 15-bedroom property overlooks the Whanganui Inlet. NZ Sotheby’s Realty
An advertisement calling for an intellectually curious librarian or curator at a multi-million-dollar remote coastal estate in Golden Bay has sparked widespread interest.
The job? To build and furnish an “End of the World Library” at a sprawling property overlooking the Whanganui Inlet near the top of the South Island.
More specifically, entrepreneurial couple Eva and Toni Piëch, want an “intellectually curious librarian or curator” to build a collection that will help them survive if the world ends.
Eva founded medicinal cannabis clinic CannaPlus+ in 2022, while Toni, the great grandson of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche, co-founded electric vehicle manufacturer Piëch Automotive in 2017.
The 330-hectare property near the Whanganui Inlet in Mangarākau, Tasman, is a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Nelson.
The 15-bedroom home made of Otago schist and Tasmanian Oak was formerly a luxury retreat and was on the market for six years before it was sold last year for $20 million to the Piëch’s and became their private home.
The job, posted on the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa website, was calling for someone to curate a library collection “that would remain meaningful and useful under extreme long-term scenarios” with a focus on essential knowledge, foundational literature and practical survival.
Association chief executive, Laura Marshall, said the role wasn’t a traditional library one, it was the kind of listing occasionally seen overseas and the first time the organisation had advertised a job in a private library.
“Perhaps they’re building a bunker to hunker down because New Zealand’s such a fabulous place, or they are just really organised? Perhaps they’re going to build a fabulous garden and do everything from scratch by themselves,” she said.
Marshall previously worked in the rare book market and said she had been called upon to help build private libraries, which were often stylised, coming with a brief that might require metres of leather books and first edition classics.
“I actually think this is a fabulous idea to call upon a library professional to help build a library that’s based on substance rather than looks,” she said.
She could not say how much interest there had been in the role because applications were sent directly to Westhaven Estate.
Golden Bay journalist and author Gerard Hindmarsh, who has written extensively about the area, said the “spectacular” property encompassed 330 hectares including extensive native forest and around eight kilometres of coastline.
He visited it many times when it belonged to former owners, Monika and Bruno Stompe, who built the lodge and called the property home for 27 years.
“It’s a very special place, it’s got the second biggest nikau forest after the Heaphy Coast, it’s just spectacular and the limestone formations are just something else.”
He said the South Head of the Whanganui Inlet was part of the Te Tai Tapu Estates, which was purchased from the Maori in the 1880s, before being separated off into coastal farms in the 1920s.
It would be a bolt-hole for the new owners, he said, who it’s understood intend to spend half the year there and the other in Europe.
“I think that for them it’s a property they can escape the wilds of the world, really and I think to have a library that can withstand some sort of Armageddon is an expression of that.”
Hindmarsh said a local real estate agent had spoken of the increasing demand from people looking to escape the Northern Hemisphere and move to New Zealand.
That’s something Baz Macdonald, who produced the 2019 VICE documentary, Hunt for the Bunker People, had also noticed.
The documentary delved into why New Zealand was attracting wealthy millionaires and billionaires who were looking at for a bolt-hole, and whether or not they were also burying survival bunkers in some of Aotearoa’s most scenic country.
While there was little evidence of billionaire bunker construction, Macdonald said New Zealand was clearly seen as an attractive safe haven to some of the world’s most wealthy as it offered a form of “apocalypse insurance”.
“It verified that a lot of wealthy people around the world right now are definitely looking at New Zealand, thinking about New Zealand, thinking about the context of what’s happening around the world and what New Zealand might offer them if something does go wrong.
“We’re also seen as a sort of self-sustaining nation, we have the ability to grow our own food, we are stable governmentally and seen as good people, supportive people with collaborative communities.
“So there’s just a whole bunch of factors that make us seem really appealing if something were to go wrong elsewhere in the world.”
Macdonald said the concept of an end of the world library was a smart one.
“It would be a shame if a library like this went in with a particular political slant or a philosophical slant, but certainly the idea of having a collection of knowledge that would allow you to be self-sustaining, to rebuild, to know how electrical systems work and agriculture and all these sorts of things is a really important one.
“I’m not entirely sure what the merit of having your own personal version of this is, because I would hope, especially in New Zealand, that we have those resources available and as a community we would collectively bring our skills and resources to bear on solving a problem if there was some kind of collapse.”
RNZ’s attempts to contact Eva and Toni Piëch had gone unanswered.
Applications to curate the Westhhaven Estate library close on 30 April.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand