About Us
Your hosts are Sally & Giff. We have been involved with providing quality accommodation for the last 15 years. We moved onto this property in 2007 with the idea of providing quality accommodation to people that liked to get 'away from the crowds'.
We renovated the house, built the chalets and developed the walkways through the wetland and up through the native bush. We derive our income from the accommodation we provide, leasing out the pasture part of the property, beekeeping (Producing honey from the manuka that is so abundant in the area) and accumulation of carbon credits from the covenant / carbon farm part of the property.
We are both passionate about the environment and the opportunity to protect this part of the Mangarakau swamp was too good to pass by. We decided to combine our experience in Motelling with our passion for the Wetland and offer top quality accommodation with good friendly service while also keeping our impact on the environment to an absolute minimum. The flowers, fruit, berries, vegetables and trees in the garden are now quite stunning and provide a lot of the organic fresh vegetables and fruit that we eat and share with our neighbours.
We have now formed a QE2 covenant covering all the swamp and buffer area part of the property and fenced the stock out of this and all the drains and streams leading into it. We have also defined the same area as a carbon farm and collect the carbon credits from it each year.
Scattered around the wetland we have about 80 beehives. All our honey is tested and classed as either monofloral or multifloral Manuka honey. Our honey is packaged and labeled 'Mangarakau Gold' and is available for guests to purchase. More information on test results as well as a pollen count are available from us at reception.
