A bach is a small, often very modest holiday home or beach house in New Zealand. Baches are an iconic part of the country's history and culture. In the middle of the 20th century, they symbolisedthe beach holiday lifestyle that was becoming more accessible to the middle class. Baches began to gain popularity in the 1950s as roads improved and the increasing availability of cars allowed for middle-class beach holidays, often to the same beach every year. With yearly return trips being made, baches began to spring up in many family vacation spots.
Etymology
Bach was thought to be originally short for bachelor pad, but actually they often tended to be a family holiday home. An alternative theory for the origin of the word is that is the Welsh word for small and little. The phrase "Tŷ Bach" is used for outbuildings, with sizeable population of Welsh miners relocated to New Zealand during mining booms.
Construction
Post-World War II
They are almost always small structures, usually made of cheap or recycled material like fibrolite, corrugated iron or used timber. They were influenced by the backwoods cabins and sheds of the early settlers and farmers. Other baches used a caravan as the core of the structure, and built extensions on to that. Many cities were dismantling tram systems in the 1950s, and old trams were sometimes used as baches, most noticeably on the coast of the Coromandel Peninsula on the Firth of Thames, to which more than 100 trams were relocated. A reconstructed example of a typical bach from the 1950s can be found in National Maritime Museum on Princes Wharf in central Auckland. The period-furnished bach is complemented with an adjacent beach shop with original products from that time. While older baches tend to be fibrolite lean-to structures, modern kit-set buildings are becoming popular amongst bach owners. Some figures estimate that more than 50,000 baches exist around New Zealand.
Recent times
Early baches rarely enjoyed amenities like connections to the water and electricity grid or indoor toilets. They were furnished basically, often with secondhand furniture. In more recent times the basic bach has been replaced by the modern "holiday house", more substantial, more expensive and usually professionally built. Another important change has been the subdivision of coastal land, with increasing numbers of residents and visitors, bringing traffic, cafes, mobile phone coverage, craft shops and other conveniences to what were originally empty beaches and bush-filled gullies. Some bach-dotted beaches in the 1950s have today become suburban areas.
Legal status
Old baches often have "existing use" rights under the 1991 Resource Management Act in areas where newer planning regulations would not allow even such modest residential or part-time residential buildings. As such they are quite prized, even though authorities typically look unfavourably on proposals to convert them into full residential buildings.
