Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
The northern Coromandel Peninsula is just 60 kilometres from downtown Auckland as the crow flies... however few roads are sealed, the hills are still bush-clad and very few people call it home.
Colville farmer Les Ward is one of them - his grandfather arrived in the area in the late 1890's wanting a better life - and the peninsula is still dotted with his descendants.
Les says mains electiricty didn't reach his family until 1968, eighty years after the first town in New Zealand was hooked up to a power supply.
