“No such thing as overnight courier to or from the Chathams”

On a Saturday morning, Waitangi, the self-proclaimed capital of the Chatham Islands – and in fact, the only township – is a bustling hive of activity.

Split down the middle by a shoddy one-lane bridge over the Mangatukurewa Creek (also known as Nairn River), Waitangi, in the stunning Petre Bay, is our shopping centre.

The River Onion Gallery and café is filled with locals and visitors enjoying coffee and freshly made blue cod pies. The overflowing mechanic's garage is a bit further up the road. There’s the chippie, and the Waitangi Café, right next door to the police station and courthouse. The ANZ bank is open one day a week. Down the hill you’ll find Hotel Chathams, which serves as the island's one and only bar and restaurant.

Saturday means the Waitangi General Store, better known as the Top Shop, is freshly stocked with chilled goods, fruit, veg and bread. There’s a slow line of trucks waiting to fill with diesel. And with any luck, the back room will be filled with parcels; neatly stacked towers of online shopping. Supplies, bargains and gifts galore.

Because sourcing the things you need isn’t as straightforward here as just nipping down to the shop, and there’s no such thing as an overnight courier to or from the Chathams, during busy times of the year, especially in summer when the planes are full, even small parcels can take 3–4 weeks to arrive. Christmas shopping begins at the start of November, just to be sure Santa arrives in time.

To purchase on the island, two litres of fresh milk will set you back $15. A loaf of white toast bread is $8. Cheese for sammies? That’s $30 for a 1kg block. Or if you’re feeling like a real treat, a block of chocolate is a smooth $12.

The shop owners here, just like the locals, only have two options for getting stores on or off the islands: in the air or on the sea. The plane covers mainly postage and fresh stores or groceries – and of course humans – on the way in. You may find yourself seated next to a bin of live pāua or crayfish on the way out.

Our large cargo ship carries anything from tractors and trucks to grocery and grog orders, furniture, even chooks. Pretty much anything from her ports in Napier and Timaru. Shopping comes in, farm stock and fish go out.

Like many others here, most of my shopping is done online and in bulk, with my large orders delivered by ship once every six weeks or so. Fruit and veg orders I fly in on the plane, once or twice a month. Trips to the shop are reserved for treats and desperate times!

Both options add an excruciating amount of cost to goods and to the general cost of living here. For shops, this of course means passing the cost of freight on to customers. For us, it means an extra $250–$300 for freight on top of a $1500 grocery shop that comes on the boat.

Opening our dreaded ‘freight bill’ is never a pleasant experience! Seeing the words ‘fuel’ or ‘freight’ followed by ‘increase’ makes us wince. In fact, as I sit typing this column, my partner has announced that petrol has gone up to $4.50 a litre at the pump.

It can sometimes feel like a logistical - and financial – nightmare living on the Chathams. Over time though, your book of tips and tricks expands, and you find the cheapest and easiest places to shop. You become more resilient to island living and adapt to not being able to just nip to the shop.

And it is, of course, ultimately worth it to live where we do. We live here for the lifestyle. Homekill meat, catching blue cod and crayfish and collecting pāua from the rocks, learning to grow your own fruit and veg, harvesting wild cranberries and blackberries. That’s life on the Chathams.