Love and the city! WENDYL'S CHANGE OF HEART

After a decade in the country, she’s given up the good life to return home

- Fleur Guthrie

Over the past 10 years (aka her “menopause decade”), Weekly readers will recall Wendyl Nissen left Auckland behind for a quiet country life in the Hokianga.

The media personality and her husband Paul Little bought a remote, two-hectare plot overlooking the picturesque harbour, where her parents lived in a cottage attached to the main house.

It was a season where Wendyl wanted to soak up some serenity and remove herself from maybe harming others, she half-jokes, while battling hot flushes.

So she embraced flowy, cotton frocks to collect fresh eggs from the chickens and preserve fruit from the trees. The former Weekly editor wrote five books and also helped care for her late mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease.

Living in a bucolic setting had been Wendyl’s childhood dream. Turns out, though, you can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.

The 62-year-old has now said goodbye to the land and livestock – their Hokianga property is currently on the market – and returned home to Point Chevalier in Auckland Central. So, what changed?

“Both Paul and I grew up in Auckland,” she explains. “Moving to the country was always my dream – not so much his – but he was happy to go along with it.