The Bayview Story

Bayview Farms was first settled in 1875 by the Thompson family who started to clear the land in the late 1870's. In 1956 the farm was sold to the Godsiff family who farmed it until we purchased the property in 2003. Over the years Bayview has been run as a sheep station, cropping farm, dairy farm, deer farm and now as a vineyard. We are truly blessed to be able to continue with the farm and hope it can remain in our family for many generations.

In 2003, we sold our vineyard in California in search of a different way of life, something simpler. We searched for property in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland and New Zealand. In April 2003, we came over to New Zealand to view two farms for sale, one in Nelson and the other in the Marlborough Sounds. Being born and bred in Auckland I had never been to either place so it was quite exciting. After finding a Real Estate Agent that would show the property in the Sounds, we set off early one morning to meet the agent in Havelock. It was such a beautiful drive out to Waitaria Bay, long and winding, but still the most impressive scenery in the world. Steep pine covered mountains, open farmland, meandering rivers and streams, abundant native bush and of course all of this right down to the shores of the Kenepuru Sounds.

In reality we had already decided just from the photos we had seen on the internet that Bayview was going to be our new home, and this was confirmed once we pulled up to the farm. The property is about 1000 acres stretching over an entire valley and fronts on to about 1 kilometre of the beach of Waitaria Bay.

We slowly drove over hundreds of acres of flat deer farm and gradually wound our way up to a plateau at the back of the farm. The view from this point was one-in-a-million and this is where we decided that this was definitely the place for us. One rule we live by is listen to our first gut instincts, and our guts were telling us loud and clear "Buy it"!!!

We decided to take a water taxi back to Havelock to check out alternative ways to travel. This was well worth it, just to give a different perspective to the area.

We went back to Bayview a couple of days later to meet with the Godsiffs, have another little walk around and then back to Blenheim to make an offer. The sale closed in August of 2003 and in November 2003 we relocated back to New Zealand, bringing with us 10 cats and dogs and 3 Clydesdale horses from California.

We bought Bayview as a deer farm which we still run and over the past 5 years have expanded into Alpaca breeders and of course planted the first commercial vineyard in the Marlborough Sounds.