We’re not a community anymore.
Things change, I understand that.
But sooner or later families will come here again.
Will want to live this kind of lifestyle, you know?
Oh no, Not home.
It hasn’t happened yet, but you never know.
That guy is the one who burns down houses,
[Zealandia}
[The Last Man of Mahana]
[Mahana was established in the late 70s]
[as a community free of land ownership.]
[The ideals it was founded on are now in jeopardy]
[because of conflict between its members.]
As far as you can see that’s Mahana... everything.
Right up to the top there.
That’s all Mahana.
I don’t say that Mahana is a paradise.
You know, living here is not easy.
At the moment there’s about 20 people that live here.
And I would say about three teenagers.
I’ve lived here approximately 35 years.
The peak of Mahana would have been about 20 years ago.
That’s when it was a thriving community.
Everything was done voluntarily.
People did everything on a voluntary basis.
Nobody was compelled to do anything.
There was about between 60 and 70 people lived here in that heyday.
27 children.
Well, that car belonged to a guy who used to live in that house.
And when he left, he left that car behind.
But it’s broken down, you know.
Mahana started as a festival in the 1970s, the Nambassa Festival.
People put forward that all problems in the world
are caused by the ownership of land.
So the Mahana people that took part in that festival
got enthused by that.
And they decided to form a company to buy a block of land
and set the land free,
so that it was not owned by anybody
and anybody could come and live here.
They took out a mortgage and the mortgage was eventually paid off.
And the land is now what they call freehold, an open community.
Any person can be a member by signing the book, agreeing to these rules.
You don't have to pay a fee.
There are hundreds of members of the Mahana society.
They don’t necessarily live here, but they agree with the rules
and the object of the society.
Of course, over the years...
that philosophy has been watered down by the ones who presently live here.
The rot started about 12 years ago.
People started drifting away and the ones that stayed here,
they’re the ones who changed the rules
and have the land only for themselves again.
Which again, as you can see, that creates the problem.
They want to own it, it’s theirs, “You can’t come here.”
This was a perfectly liveable house.
And a lady with two children and her father,
they wanted to move in here.
In order to prevent her from moving in here,
they did this to that house.
Because they want the land for themselves.
It’s actually dangerous now, you know?
But the people who did this, they use all sorts of excuses,
they use the excuse that this house was a health hazard.
Everyone who did this lives more than a kilometer away from here.
A health hazard to whom?
This used to be a house.
Where we store the honey.
There’s a concrete slab there, that used to be the kitchen.
He burned it down.
He started a fire underneath it and then walked away.
But you can see, see the trees are burnt.
He doesn’t want anybody new to come to Mahana.
So he burns it down.
This is the old cookhouse.
That’s where we used to have our communal meals,
and we had a kitchen and everything.
It’s a bit neglected at the moment,
but it’s still... it’s still in use, you know?
The cookhouse used to be the...
the soul of Mahana.
There was always people in the cookhouse.
There was always a pot of tea on the stove.
And there was always a cook.
You didn't have to cook.
It was not compulsory.
It was voluntary.
We had visitors from America here,
they found it incredible that it worked.
“Really, voluntary?“, you know?
“Nobody has to?”
But I remember sitting here on a bench,
and I had what I call a religious experience.
I knew I had arrived at a place where I wanted to be.
The one I had been looking for all my life.
I was living in Wellington, previously.
You live in a house in the street, you’re a sitting duck
when you use marijuana.
The police used to come every year and raid me.
But eventually I thought, “I don’t want to work for society,
I don’t want to be part of society anymore.”
And eventually I came to Mahana.
I didn’t look for it consciously, but subconsciously...
I knew I had found what I wanted.
This is where the kids used to measure how tall they are,
and their names are still on it, you know?
It makes me want them back.
You know, I would love to have a whole lot of kids here again.
But the past is the past, and you can’t bring it back.
You just have to look towards the future.
You can see this was ready to...
for somebody to move in here with a family, and that didn’t happen.
And I don't know exactly what the reason is.
Somebody must have tried to break a window.
It wasn’t like that last time I was here.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. See what this is?
Somebody’s been drying their dope in here.
They smoke it themselves, but they also make money off it.
Some of them can have enormous amounts, it’s one of the reasons
they don’t want people moving in.
Because they’re scared for their plots.
What deteriorated it even further is when the kids grew older.
The kids themselves didn’t want to live at Mahana anymore,
because they were enticed by the toys of the modern world.
For a long time we were hoping that we would get an influx of new ones.
But that hasn’t happened and now they’re trying to prevent it,
which is even worse.
Usually I drive into town to go and see my granddaughter.
Come here.
Come on.
Here’s Superman, I’ll have that.
My name is Rose Dudson, originally Rose Moses,
and I’m Arthur’s granddaughter.
And... I did grow up in Mahana.
It was... interesting.
It was good.
I think you learn a value for people.
Relationships and people.
I think it's really sad with the residents.
I think there’s a lot of angst and hate and...
yeah, I’m not part of it.
It's not my life.
I chose to live here in my little world.
It’s my grandfather and he’s old and...
hopefully going to move in here one day soon.
This is another resident of Mahana, that lives here.
That’s... Dave Prisk is his name.
We don’t see eye to eye on lots of things, but...
you can go and talk to him.
You can stop there, Arthur. What do you want?
These guys are doing a documentary about Mahana.
I wonder if you want to talk to them and...
tell them what you think about Mahana.
Yeah, OK. Without you present.
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, OK.
Is that alright?
OK, yeah.
My name's David.
David Prisk.
I love the freedom here, I love...
I do enjoy the isolation, I enjoy...
I enjoy the bush, I enjoy not having neighboring houses that I can see.
For the last 15 years the place has been quite stable.
The meetings have been well-behaved.
Some of the ones who own houses up the top,
they grew up as children here.
Now they've got their own children here.
They've built their own houses.
We've learned how to get along with each other.
We tried to come up with a policy a number of years ago.
We’ve got a sort of two-tier structure.
We have members who don't live here and then we have resident members.
Arthur’s never liked... while he’s...
He’d like anyone to come in.
Because at the moment, someone can come down and we haven’t met them
and they can sign a book and they get a life membership in Mahana.
We had, one example, we had some people wanting to move in
just before Christmas.
And Port Charles had been three houses burgled in a single night.
The property where these people were living...
a lot of the stolen stuff got found on their property.
We stopped these people moving in
and we’ve been slammed for that.
There was a house deconstructed.
Because there was no policy to say no to certain people moving in,
it was seen as the only option to stop elements which we considered
undesirable from moving in here.
Arthur’s got no children living here, he’s got no family here.
I’ve got a school-age child here.
Arthur doesn't seem to know anything about what a lot of us do.
He doesn’t have much in the way of relationships
with the other residents here, so he’s probably quite lonely.
The cookhouse doesn’t operate anymore.
I mean people just didn't have the energy to put into it.
You know, they had their own families to raise, they were building houses.
That just sort of died a natural death.
There is a lot of interaction still among people,
but it’s not done in one particular place.
Unless you’ve made friendships with those people,
you don’t sort of have the interaction with them.
Arthur probably does miss that.
He hasn't really established relationships with a lot of us.
No, we don’t want him around our families.
That's not dismantling it is vandalism.
Dismantling is done systematically.
You take the roof down first.
They’re just saying that.
That’s not an excuse at all.
They have no right to demolish a house that belongs to Mahana.
That's not a community.
Loneliness is something I've never experienced in my life.
My own company is satisfactory.
A real lonely person is lonely in a crowd.
I don't need anybody.