As New Zealand’s fastest growing secondary urban area, Pukekohe offers not only excellent residential options and recreational opportunities, but also access to the goods and services available in much larger centres.
Pukekohe is the largest town in Franklin combining city savvy with country charm, with boutique-style shopping in its main street and a busy central business district. While Franklin’s aspect may be predominantly rural this is far from the case as regards facilities and services with shoppers finding a retail mecca in Pukekohe’s tiled town centre providing everything from sporting goods and sewing shops, banks and book stores, home wares, cafes and restaurants to fashion and furniture.
I was born here in this little town some 30km southern outskirts of Auckland city in New Zealand. Back in the days where the local corner store was the place to hang out. Rex Stone owned the Hill Dairy store and Mr Shepard ran the little 4 Square Supermarket on the corner of Kitchener and Queen sts
We used to ride to school on our bike and anywhere else we could around the town. We would stop on the way home on Wellington St and eat the blackberries that formed a hedge along the edge of the huge potato fields that surrounded Pukekohe Hill. Life was simple back then.
My father worked as a painter and then moved into managing the local decorating store, so we knew a lot of the locals. Being a small provincial town everyone knew each other, sadly in most towns now we don’t get to know our townsfolk.
We used to love the weekends and going for drives to the city. Farmers Hobson St was the place to go, complete with it’s children’s play ground on the top floor. Now the old Farmers Building is the Heritage Hotel.
Now many years have gone by and it’s no longer Pukekohe that’s considered the poor cousin to Auckland. It’s now the City folk that come to Pukekohe to sit in a café’s and enjoy the countryside. House prices here are the same as the city and the town has really grown up to meet the challenges placed by the huge shopping centres that are closer to the city.
Pukekohe is famous, not only for it’s rich volcanic growing soils but it boasts an International Motor Racing Circuit that attracts thousands each year.
So matter what happens to Pukekohe it will remain in my mind as the Market Garden Capital of New Zealand.
