For newly minted New Zealand citizens Martin Sayer and Mel Hall, good things truly have taken time.

New Zealand citizenship has been a long time coming for Martin, who was originally to move to New Zealand in 1969. He and Mel were two of 16 new citizenships conferred by Central Otago district mayor Tim Cadogan on Friday (September 15).

Martin’s father and grandfather were both engineers, as is Martin, and his grandfather moved to New Zealand in 1969, with Martin’s immediate family to follow.

“My grandfather liked New Zealand and he decided he would move on over first. He came over, bought a house, and set up a business that my dad was going to run with him.

“We lived in Kent and we sold the house. We went down to Southampton and literally got to the boat to get on the boat and my sister started screaming in pain.”

She was rushed to hospital in London, where she spent the next year as one of her legs was not growing properly.

“We ended up moving to the Isle of Wight where we stayed with my other grandmother and grandfather,” he said. “My granddad had to come back because he was on his own then.”

The family did not know he had suffered a minor heart attack while in New Zealand, and a few weeks after arriving back in the United Kingdom, he had a major heart attack and died.

Martin married and had children but the marriage did not last, and Mel’s relationship story was similar, with children and a relationship breakdown.

That was until one day when Martin was visiting his mother, who Mel lived opposite. The two, both in their 40s by now, had been nodding acquaintances but never really spoken.

Mel was in her garage and he stopped to talk with her, “and we got chatting and that was it really”, Martin said.

Mel had also lived on the Isle of Wight at the same time as Martin and the two worked out that in their entire lives, they had never lived more than seven miles apart.

“It was like it was meant to be,” Martin said.

The couple both made their citizenship affirmations in te reo Maori after the mayor read out their stories, and they said tikanga and te reo Maori were important to them.

“We both love the Maori language, the culture, the beliefs,” Martin said. “Ninety percent of our friends in the North Island were Maori or Pasifika. We were made welcome in their whānau, in their traditions.”

When they first arrived in Tauranga, they were welcomed into the home of a Maori woman, who they said was amazing.

“Arrangements were made to stay with a lady - we had never met her,” Martin said. “She opened her door to us, everything she had was ours.

“We were walking in the water one evening and we saw a stingray come in, and then we saw three stingrays. There’s a Maori legend about three stingrays and she said it meant we would stay.”

“We knew then,” Mel said. “She printed the story off for us and we have had it on our fridge ever since.”

They first moved to Greymouth and their weekends would often involve driving to Central to tramp or climb.

“We love the mountains, the tranquility, we are really into nature,” Mel said.

“And we find the people are friendlier down here,” Martin added. “We’ll go tramping and end up sitting down having a coffee with someone.”