This article was first published in Newsroom. You can read it here.

Come for lunch, said Danielle Hawkins. The biggest-selling novelist in New Zealand lives on her family farm overlooking Otorohanga. Her views are breathtaking: Kakepuku mountain rises from the plains, and farms dot the foothills of Mount Pirongia in the distance. Her lunch is pretty specular too.

She’s made freshly baked sourdough bread to go with cauliflower soup, and a lime and coconut cake for dessert. The interview was conducted over the dining room table.

As she poured the soup into bowls, Hawkins began answering questions about her novel When It All Went to Custard, which has become a publishing sensation – number one on the New Zealand best-seller list for months, only toppled for one week when Fiona Kidman won the $50,000 Acorn prize for fiction with her novel This Mortal Boy, but Custard promptly regained the top spot and has stayed there ever since.

From the beginning, Hawkins had a clear location in mind for the novel. Her family farm acted as her inspiration for the station where most of the story takes place. The farm has been in her family for three generations. Her grandfather bought it when he returned from World War II, and Hawkins and her husband Jarrod now run 500 cows and 500 sheep.

It really shines through When It All Went to Custard. Hawkins writes knowingly of the fresh mornings, the freezing rain, and the rolling hills and gullies of the fictional settlement of Tipoi. A story of betrayal and struggle, the novel follows the main character Jenny, after she gives her cheating husband the boot and juggles a sheep farm, council job and a coterie of well-meaning friends, all the while looking after her two children Lily and Nathan.

Jenny can never seem to catch a break. The bills begin to stack, the useless advice from friends stacks even higher and the troubles never seem to leave her side – just like her loyal dog Tessa.

It’s very good fun, but the first draft was written in fear and agony. “I really struggled with this book,” she said. “At first I was writing it and enjoying it. Then I got sick. I had cancer and was having chemo. I thought, ‘I haven’t got anything else to do, I’m going to bloody keep writing this book.’

I thought, ‘I haven’t got anything else to do, I’m going to bloody keep writing this book.’

“So I kept on writing and kept on writing, and I knew I wasn’t writing very nice stuff and that was depressing, but I didn’t stop. I felt this great sense of obligation. I struggled through it and struggled through it and struggled through it. I wasn’t feeling very cheerful and it really showed.

“Eventually I struggled to the end of this thing that was a bit of a dog and I sent it off saying, ‘I don’t like it very much but I’m sick and I can’t look at it anymore.’

“And they [HarperCollins, her publisher] wrote back and said, ‘Yeah we don’t like it either.’

“I was like, ‘That was constructive, thank you.’ It was kind of crushing.

“I had to do lots and lots of rewriting. But I knew I hadn’t got it right. It just needed to be made nicer all the way along. By the end of the first draft, poor old Jenny was the most unfortunate person in the world and everyone was trying to shaft her and they were all just a pack of total mongrels and no one was any good. I had to go through and make everyone a whole lot nicer.”

The novel is written in the kind of hushed voice, quiet chit-chat style that New Zealanders do so well.

“I really like getting dialogue right in books,” she said. “I was reading a book a few years ago and at the end the characters got together and the guy takes her in his arms and says, ‘I want to make babies with you! Lovely babies!’ No man would ever say that.

“So if the dialogue feels Kiwi, it’s because it comes out of my accent.”

The fictional town of Tipoi is half Te Kuiti, half Putaruru. Jenny works in a council office, which Hawkins based on the Waitomo District Council.

As she cleared away the cauliflower soup, Hawkins said the experiences of the characters – from farming to floundering – were based on experiences of real people. Like Jenny, Hawkins’ family also lives close by.

“Mum and Dad are just down the road. But they’re not the parents in the book, and neither is my sister. She’s a particularly nice girl, married to a particularly nice fellow and they live in Te Kuiti. The only similarity is that she’s a lot thinner than me.”

The cancer and the rewrite meant she missed her deadline, but the publishers were understanding, and patient.

“They were very, very nice about it,” she said. “It had a delivery time but I got cancer, and they just said, ‘It doesn’t matter when it turns up.’ That was really lovely. So I only put pressure on myself.

“But it’s a shame it’s not very well paid, writing. Well, the authors aren’t very well paid. I don’t know if the publishers make any money out of it or not – I suspect they make quite a lot more than we do.

“It’s really easy to get bitter and resentful, you know – something that is paid like a hobby and you have to treat it like it’s a job. For me, it really pisses me off and I get quite bitter about the whole thing and it’s better just not to get bitter and to keep enjoying it.”

HarperCollins turned down her first manuscript. “They said, ‘Try rural women’s fiction- that’s what sells really well.’ I went, ‘Oh that’s kind of easy cos that’s my life.’”

She wrote Chocolate Cake for Breakfast, which became a best-seller. When It All Went to Custard was the second in her two-book deal with the publisher.

She served her coconut and lime cake. It was sublime. We had seconds, and she talked about the book she’s currently writing.

“I’m trying to set it in a made up fairytale-type kingdom and I’m struggling a little bit with that,” she said.

“You can’t write in a Kiwi idiom cos that would just make it ridiculous. You’ve got to make sure they’re not saying, ‘Ah, she’ll be right!’ But having taken out all the little ‘chur bro’ and stuff, I haven’t got anything to replace it with. So it’s coming along rather slowly.

“I thought it would be fun, cos it’s the kind of book I like to read. She [the main character] lives in this castle and her father’s quite a nice man but he kind of wanders around in a selfish way, wanting to shoot everything that moves. And she gets kidnapped by revolutionaries but they’re really inept and don’t know what they’re doing. She ends up rescuing them.

“I’m trying to do it without being exactly like Terry Pratchett or being really lame. A bit fairytale, so it reminds you of Cinderella as you go. She’s got this crazy great aunt that won’t cut her hair. But I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull it off.”

It’s a radical departure from Chocolate and Custard.

“I just felt like I had explored all the storylines of girls a bit like me who had lived rurally. There’s only a certain number of things that could happen. Once you’ve had the unexpected pregnancy storyline and your husband wandering off, you’re kind of done.”

Leaving the dining table and walking out onto the patio reveals the true beauty of the farm setting: a panoramic view of the whole region. Her pigs trot up the hill to greet her. A pīwakawaka flits around the fenceposts, and a tui bathes in the birdbath, enjoying the pale sun. Hawkins has seen a resurgence in native birds on her farm, and the bird bath seems to be a selling point.

She said, “I think I’ll keep writing for the rest of my life.”

When it All Went to Custard by Danielle Hawkins (HarperCollins, $35)

With the average market rent for Hamilton East at $340/w, many New Zealanders are struggling to realise their dreams of home ownership. A record low of 63% of New Zealanders own their own home, the lowest in over 60 years. The first of the KiwiBuild homes in the Waikato have opened the ballots for prospective buyers, hearkening back to the first of the state housing build wave and Frankton Model Village years before.

The sale of state houses under the National government of the 2000s has only helped grow the problem, and with no new houses being built, many New Zealanders are struggling to realise their dreams of home ownership. The most recent solution posed for this problem is KiwiBuild, the largest housing venture in almost 80 years.

By Oskar Howell

Enter Kiwibuild

Unlike previous government housing ventures, does not exist as state housing, instead aiming to expand home ownership by driving up supply in the market and opening the market to first home buyers.

Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford says the country is in good hands with the KiwiBuild scheme.

“KiwiBuild is the biggest Government backed building programme since the 1940s. Like the first Labour Government, our Government isn’t afraid to intervene in a broken market and build more houses.

“Our Government’s bold plan to build our way out of the housing crisis is giving certainty to Housing NZ which it needs to work with its partners in new ways to achieve innovation and cost reductions, and to support them to scale up to meet our targets.”

Under the Kiwibuild scheme, 100,000 new houses will be developed in the next 10 years. Half of these will be in Auckland, and all state houses will cost under $600,000.

With this comes the aim to force a change in the housing market. With 50,000 new houses set for construction in Auckland, Twyford says he aims to force inflation in the market down, making houses more affordable to first time buyers.

The ambitious scheme is supported by infrastructure and development, including a new training scheme for building apprenticeships that will add a further 4000 workers to the build force.

Twyford acknowledges the growth the industry is set to face, and like with the Frankton Model Village, is making sure Kiwibuild incorporates concepts like pre-determined floor designs and prefabricated materials to speed up the build time.

“They [Housing New Zealand] also have Council-approved standardised designs for homes with up to six bedrooms, which remove the need to redesign and request both resource and building consent for every project.

“Together with standardised construction methods, they can save up to nine months of pre-construction planning, consenting and building time.”

Like the Frankton Model Village in Hamilton, the current model for KiwiBuild also incorporates the manufacturing of materials off site, which are shipped to the building site for construction.

“Housing NZ is increasingly using off-site manufacturing technologies in its new build programme. The use of manufactured solutions started in 2016 with the establishment of an Off-site Manufacturing Solution Supplier Panel.

“For the government, the use of prefabrications in the housing industry has a long and fruitful history, and allows for new technology and design to improve the livelihoods of New Zealanders nationwide.

However Kiwibuild is not without its shortcomings. As a housing venture, it has come under harsh criticism for not allowing lower income families an entry into the property market, only facilitating middle income families.

KiwiBuild promised affordable housing, never said who could afford them.

Increased supply will slow rise in prices but will KiwiBuild deliver enough to impact the market? Too early to know.

Right now we need solutions for affordability like rent to own & shared equity. #nzpol https://t.co/e8hn5ggufG

— Damian Light (@damianlight) October 29, 2018

Twyford says that it’s important to recognise that this was never what KiwiBuild was meant to do.

“KiwiBuild homes are not state homes. KiwiBuild homes are sold to first home buyers.”

For many, Kiwibuild represents a chance to break into a privileged and exclusive housing market and a place on the housing ladder.

By Arielle Christiansen

On the surface, Frankton looks like any other suburb. Old streets woven with new townhouses and the odd corner shop. However, Frankton has a deep history embedded in the community spirit and social progress of New Zealand.

Working on the railways was a laborious task. The hours were long, and the work was tough. Railways demanded round-the-clock maintenance, requiring large amounts of workers to live close to the lines to keep the system running smoothly.

In 1919, General Manager of the New Zealand Railways R.W McVilly penned a letter to then acting prime minister of New Zealand, Sir James Allen. He drew attention to the ‘very serious difficulty’ that the railwaymen were facing trying to secure housing for their families.

McVilly stated that this could only be rectified if ‘the Government provided the Railway Department with sufficient funds’ to keep building railway houses for the workers.

Frankton was a major rail hub in the country, with acres of unsettled land. Its proximity to the station allowed workers to be close to work, but far enough away from the smoke and noise to create a balance between work and life.

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The plan to create a model suburb moved quickly. Actioned by William Massey, minister of railways, the plan was proposed in 1919 and began motion within a year; lightspeed by today’s standards.

The radical scheme McVilly proposed, involved the setup of a sawmill and house factory in Frankton to make prefabricated railway cottages. They would be cheap to manufacture and quick to assemble.

George Troup, an architect was brought into the consultation and was appointed the officer in charge of the new Architectural Branch of the New Zealand Railways in Frankton. Troup had experience in town planning and used the garden city ideology as a foundation for the Frankton Village.

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Troup’s adoption and strong adhesion to the concept meant that the Frankton Junction village was designed with the mental well being of workers and a strong community spirit in mind, rather than maximising space and accommodation.

Unlike the corporate privatisation of state housing that was occurring in Great Britain during the time, with their terraced housing developments.

The Frankton Model Village led to an unprecedented success in productivity and communal spirit. A tight-knit community was formed, and the settlement was socially self-sufficient. The uniformity of the houses represented one ideal and leveled the playing field for renters.

The design of the cottages was simple with little attention paid to unique design, the streamlined build process was intent on minimising building waste.

There were four house designs, appearing different from the outside but with identical floor plans. They were all designed in favour of smaller families, as single men were given accommodation in hostels.

The houses came as designed prefabrications. Resources were aggregated and cut to shape at the Frankton house factory beside the village, and at its peak, the factory was producing 30,000 feet of manufactured prefabrication a day.

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By Oskar Howell & Arielle Christiansen

A modern take on a classic solution

As the housing crisis develops, many are looking into the past to find solutions.

TDM Homes, a building company with a contemporary take on prefabricated housing is one such company. Similar to the Frankton Model Village nearly a century earlier, TDM has an entire factory dedicated to the assembly of prefabricated houses. At 1600 square feet of floor space, the factory is large and houses a refined, speedy process of home-building not yet seen in New Zealand.

Assembled in the factory, the individual rooms of the house, called ‘modules,’ are then transferred by truck to the construction site. Operations manager Anthony Blackmoore says the pre-fabrication of the houses in the factory is reshaping the industry, but says that the process for the manufacture of the modules is confidential.

“We want to streamline it [the industry] and speed up the entire process.

“Any house can be modular, it’s just about how its designed.”

TDM operates on the triple-eight setup: eight weeks to manufacture the modules, eight hours to transport and build the house on-site, and then eight days to fully furnish.

The individual sections of the house, called modules, are assembled at the factory using a variety of powdered steel, treated timber and other heavy duty building materials.

The modules are then transported by truck to the work site, and are assembled rapidly by the construction crew by conveniently bolting together.

The house is then fully furnished over the next eight days.

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Blackmoore says that despite the simplistic build prices, consumers aren’t limited to basic designs.

“Creating individual modular housing units gives us the flexibility to customise for the client.”

The short build process means less health and safety risks, less time waiting for the individual components, and less time spent in the weather.

Managing Director of TDM Trent Montgomery says that by working to a tight schedule, the company can avoid the setbacks of traditional construction and predict where problems can arise.

“We aren’t looking to be able to build twice as fast – we’re just looking at different processes and a different approach so that the overall time of the build is considerably less.

Montgomery says this is reflected in the end price for consumers.

“We’re able to reduce the time it takes to produce these homes, allowing consumers to save quite a bit of money.

“People can save money in the site works themselves, like in excavation and site preparation.”

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TDM’s unique shakeup of the housing industry has caught the eye of Housing Minister Phil Twyford, something Montgomery expects will help the business expand.

“We’re working on our pitch to the government on Kiwibuild. HNZ have always been looking at offsite manufacturing.”

“The modular system would be relatively new to them, and we can see some huge benefits for HNZ particularly in the multi-level construction.”

Montgomery says that when all is said and done, TDM are just builders out to change the industry.

“We’re not rocket scientists. We’re here to simply what we believe is a fairly basic principle, and just make it easier.”

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