There was a wily old man who lived just on the edge of the township. It was a coastal town clinging to the edges of the road. The route into the town had been carved around the Coromandel hills.

It was hard to tell the man’s age because his memories were longer than his wrinkles were deep. His face was stubbled with white hair, but his jaunty steps were more agile, than other men who were around forty. He was short and blunt. Blunt looking and blunt speaking. Perhaps that was why he lived on the edge of the community.

As long as the town folk could remember, old ‘Geeza’ had lived in this town. He reckoned he had worked some of the original gold mines, "toward the end, mind you". But he couldn’t have been that old. No one denied, however, that Geeza knew an awful lot. He was a sort of local authority.

There was a day when it was considered trendy for city people to look for a holiday home around the coast. Best if they could afford the East coast of the peninsular, with the wide sandy beaches and the surf of Whangamata. But nearly as good if it was the West coast, with a piece of land with native bush and close to the sea so that they could take their expensive boats out.

Geeza’s town was a bit too far up the peninsular to be too popular with the weekenders from Auckland. Only the odd one or two had cast their eyes over his peaceful lands. To these northern folk, even Thames was considered a bit of a ‘big smoke’ and Coromandel Township was good enough for any supplies.

One day a man in a casual stylish outfit rolled into town in his Hiace van. He was a seasoned business man of the eighties. He’d made the slick transition from a developer of mirrored glass towers to speculator of country estates.

Research was the secret to his success and because of his tremendous canny ways with lateral thinking, he knew who to get the best information from. He’d studied ancient Chinese thinking on business success. He had found his philosophic utopia in a modernised form of ‘Fung Shui’, blending harmony from any natural knowledge, with something mystical and spiritual.

This adopted philosophy, he believed, had given him a ’sixth sense’, a formula that drove his competitors crazy. He was always a step ahead. Always chose the right location and he built for the best advantage.