TV fishing host Matt Watson recalls the impact of Covid-19 on his Bay of Islands build

Matt Watson first spotted the perfect place for a house while working as a crewman on fishing boats two decades ago. Photo / supplied

Building your forever home in the remote Far North down a steep driveway nine minutes from the main gate was always going to be a challenge for TV fishing personality Matt Watson.

Throw into the mix the Covid-19 pandemic, a massive budget blowout and a film crew capturing every drama for the New Zealand public’s entertainment – and you’ve got a very stressful time indeed.

But all the hard yakka that’s gone into constructing Watson’s dream home, located inches from the sea on the Purerua peninsula in the Bay of Islands, has finally paid off.

The star of Building the Kiwi Dream had “the big reveal” during a double episode of the TV show last weekend.

Decades after first laying eyes on the land, and 10 years after being in a position to purchase it, followed by the challenging two-year build, Watson and his family – wife Kaylene and children Hannah and Shaw – stay at their new digs over the weekends.

They hope to be “well and truly settled” by Christmas.

“The day is coming,” Watson said.

“I imagine it being warm and sitting there and looking around and there being something to do – because I always like having something to do – but it not being urgent and not feeling like it’s a job anymore.

“Of feeling like it’s not a project, it’s a home.”

Watson, the host and producer of the popular ITM Fishing Show which morphed into ITM Hook Me Up!, had planned to take a two-year sabbatical from making TV shows.

He had also been travelling the world making two TV series – Man Vs Fish with Matt Watson, and The Mad Man of the Sea.

All he wanted was to focus on the new build and create the ultimate family lifestyle.

Though conflicted about allowing a film crew on to the building site, it was “too good a story not to share”.

“At the time it was a flat-out hassle, something I didn’t want to have to think about,” he said.

“I wanted to immerse myself in the process of building my forever home.

“The filming of it took away from that a bit.

“Now we’re on the other side of filming, I’m glad it was filmed.

“All the things caught on film add to the story of the place.

“Saving the story for posterity, it definitely is going to provide more value than what it took away at the time.”

Watson always wanted to be a commercial fisherman.

He was brought up in a commercial fishing environment in South Auckland, his uncles’ prominent fishers on the Manukau and the West Coast.

Watson’s time was spent either with them working their nets, or off fishing somewhere by himself.

As a teenager, he gained work laying concrete roof tiles, then started a roofing business in his 20s.

Watson moved to the Far North in 2001, the weekend after he and Kaylene married.

It was fishing that brought him north; he was simply “following the fish”, with the hefty goal of buying a game boat and taking people marlin fishing in the Bay of Islands.

Before his fishing TV career kicked off, Watson worked as a crewman on fishing boats.

“Whenever I left for sea and rounded the Nine Pin at the entrance to the Bay of Islands, I would look back at what I swore was the best spot in the world to build a home.

“A little north-facing beach at the end of the peninsula, wrapped in the surrounding hills keeping it sheltered from the prevailing winds.

“Clear blue water lapped the beach, with crayfish and big snapper a stone’s throw away and marlin less than a mile out – it was the perfect spot.”

But earning just $110 a day as a crewman, Watson could only dream of building a house there.

Ten years later the couple had almost enough money to buy the 20ha, and a mortgage made up the difference.

The build began with machinery moving in to clear the site in February 2020 – the same month the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in New Zealand.

Soon after the whole country went into lockdown.

“With our retaining wall poles hanging in the air without concrete, it was a very nervous six weeks hoping the hillside wouldn’t collapse.

“When we did get back to level three with builders back on site, the concrete trucks refused to come to the site.

“That meant we [Watson and two labourers] had to mix 140m2 of concrete by hand in a single concrete mixer.”

And though there was always going to be a budget blowout, “Covid rewrote the rule book on what things cost”, Watson said.

“Covid had a negative effect on our business.

“Just about everything traces back to the effect Covid had, not just lockdown, but the way the business landscape changed in New Zealand.

“The labour shortage, building shortage, freight, everything, it could all be pinned back to that.

“It looked like I would lose my production business because we rely on advertising and everyone cut their advertising spend overnight.

“That was a very stressful time.”

With the 320m2 house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms “pretty much” finished the Watsons can breathe a sigh of relief.

The 120m2 boatshed has another two bedrooms on the mezzanine floor along with a bathroom and outdoor shower.

Watson describes the style of the house as being “sympathetic to the land”.

“We wanted a design that didn’t stand out so we kept it as low profile as we could.

“The front of the house is designed like a pitch on a wharenui on a marae, and the accommodation wing…the lines mimic the ridges on the hills in behind it.”

The Watsons have been replanting native trees on the land since 2011, with 33,000 flax, kanuka and pohutukawa in the ground so far, and a 50,000 target.

“When we purchased this land it had been grazed for about 200 years, as part of the first farm in New Zealand.

“In that time it was regularly burned to clear away the trees a couple of times.

“The soil was very thin on the slopes…so there was not a lot of places for natives to naturally re-establish.”

As for climate change, and the sea being so close to their new house, Watson isn’t worried.

“I went out during cyclone Wilma, the biggest storm Northland had experienced and recorded the water flow and knew what the effect of 320mm rain in 24 hours looked like on the site.

“I went out and photographed the effect of storms.

“We designed drainage according to that.

“That was the beauty of not being able to afford to build for so long – we were able to do our homework.”