My Slice of Heaven: Lumsden, Southland

Hi, my name is Abel and I live in a small rural town in Southland called Lumsden. There’s about 400 people who live here, and my dad is the only local policeman!

We have one small supermarket and not many shops, so it’s lucky that we live so close to two cities. Lumsden is in the middle of Invercargill and Queenstown, and there’s heaps of tourists that come through our town. My family lives all around the South Island, they always stop in and see us on their way to their holidays.

There’s lots to do here with my friends, and everyone lives really close. We get to play all the time and heaps of my friend’s mum and dads have farms. We get to feed baby lambs, help milk cows and go on big adventures out in the paddocks. There’s even sheep shearing competitions where farmers race to shave their sheep faster than each other!

Heaps of people ride motorbikes and quad bikes here, and we have charity events where we raise money for the volunteer fire fighters. Often, we bike through local farms, some trails are pretty tough, and I’m not old enough yet to have a go, but I still like to watch! It’s cool that there’s so much stuff to do outdoors here, and everyone really friendly so it’s like having one big family.

I love living in rural New Zealand, tell me about where you live?