Surge of departures – mostly fleeing a weak economy – fuels concern over the longer-term impact on the country as some small towns scramble for survival
She considers herself a diehard South Island girl, but Harriet Baker, 33, won’t be raising her children in the city where she’s spent most of her life.
“When we bought our house I said, ‘You’ll be taking me out of here in a casket,” she says, of the Dunedin home she and husband Cameron Baker, 33, sold last month.