'Grandad was on the loo when the earthquake struck," says Gill, a chirpy New Zealander who grew up in Napier. In 1931 this genteel port on Hawke's Bay, on the east coast of North Island, was struck by a tremor measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. It flattened the city just as its children were starting the first day of a new school year. A total of 256 people lost their lives in what remains the country's worst natural disaster – although there were some lucky escapes.
"Our family had an outside toilet back then," Gill recalls, "and Grandad fell into the cess pit, where he was eventually rescued some hours later. The soft landing saved his life."
If you believe clouds have silver linings, Napier's is surely rimmed with neon and chrome, the shiny new materials of the art-deco age. For this was an earthquake that also gave back, tilting the coast up by a couple of metres and draining a huge lagoon that is now filled with fertile farmland, the city airport, and some choice stretches of 30s and 40s suburbia.
Downtown Napier, meanwhile, was quickly rebuilt in a colourful, confidence-raising art-deco style that married symbols of renewal – sunbursts, fountains, flowers – with robustly quake-proof buildings limited to two storeys. Out went brick parapets, gables and heavy facades; in came chrome speed-lines, ziggurats and naked women reaching for the stars.
What's remarkable is that it is still all there. Lovers of art deco will find plenty of individual gems to swoon over in metropolises such as Paris, New York and Shanghai, but Napier is exceptional because it offers such an engaging and strollable concentration of provincial 30s edifices.
According to the local Art Deco Trust, which arranges guided walks and bus tours and produces excellent background literature, the city has 147 art-deco buildings, decorated in styles that include Egyptian, Mayan and Maori. Many have been restored and repainted in cheery pastels, and star turns include the still-thriving 1938 Municipal Theatre, which has its original chrome and neon fittings, and a cubist carpet faithfully recreated from a pre-earthquake scrap found in the manager's office.
Walk down Tennyson Street and you meet one 1932 joy after another. Here is the curious Scinde Building, once a Masonic lodge; there are the former offices of the Daily Telegraph newspaper with its lotus flower capitals – it's now an estate agent.
Some buildings quietly tell tales about their owners' origins: there are sweet little shamrocks on the Munster Chambers, Scottish thistles on Parker's menswear store. A German national flag, in stucco, flutters above Hildebrandts, the chiropodist.
For many, the most engaging sight is the ASB Building, a 1934 bank adorned with a union of art-deco style with Maori motifs. Look above the modern counters and you see stylised hammerhead sharks, curling fern fronds and whales' tails dancing around the ceiling. In the flamboyant National Tobacco Building in the port of Ahuriri, roses and citrus fruits twirl around its stained glass dome as if to dispel the odium of smoking.
Out in the suburb of Marewa there are swathes of streamlined 30s homes with trademark flat roofs, curved corners and sunburst-pattern front gates. As if that wasn't enough, in nearby Taradale they've even got a 1931 hotel turned "McDeco McDonald's", which has achieved cult status with a particular strand of travellers.
As a result of all this, visiting Napier feels rather like discovering that there's a bonus track to the familiar compilation of New Zealand's greatest hits. We've all heard about the country's heartlifting landscapes, madcap adrenalin activities, intensely flavoured wines and the nostalgic notion it is how Britain used to be – and Hawke's Bay doesn't stint on such delights.
A 40-minute drive south from Napier lies the five-mile sandy expanse of Ocean Beach and the gannet-filled wilderness of Cape Kidnappers, a peninsula so named because in 1769 the local Maoris tried to abduct a Tahitian member of Captain Cook's crew, mistaking him for one of their own. On a rollercoaster tour of its breezy clifftops, drinking in the peace and the sea views, I find myself commenting feebly on how lucky Kiwis are to have all this fresh air and stirring countryside to play in. "We don't know we're alive," our guide reflects, just as I'm feeling very much the opposite.
For foodies, and the merely greedy, trails lead down roads lined with orchards and fields of melons and strawberries – this is where your supermarket apples may well have come from. Devotees of the assiduously sourced beach picnic can visit a wealth of small producers, such as the Hohepa farm shop near Clive, where the organic fruit and veg is as brightly coloured as snooker balls, and Arataki Honey in Havelock North, where a kilo of health-boosting manuka costs a mere £6.50.
Wine-lovers can explore a region best known for its premium reds – the finest I tasted was at Craggy Range, a shamelessly ambitious, family-run ego-trip beside Te Mata Peak. By contrast, at the small Clearview Estate on the coast near Te Awanga, the atmosphere is engagingly hippy-go-lucky, with the emphasis on "experimenting and having fun". Its self-taught owner, Tim Turvey, set up in 1988 and has watched Hawke's Bay fill to the brim with boutique wineries.
"There are two types of winemakers here," he says, "those in business, and those who are alcoholics."
Lunch at Clearview is a pleasantly boozy affair, with children welcome and the tables and chairs spreading out through the vines. As everyone sits in the sunshine sipping their delightfully crisp Sauvignon plonk and nibbling on tasting plates loaded with artisan breads, pumpkin hummus and Te Mata cheeses, I can't help thinking what a shame it is that New Zealand is so bloomin' far away. Why can't it be just down a bit from Brighton, rather than requiring so much of us in terms of expense, jet lag and movie-overload on that 24-hour, 11,400-mile fuel-guzzling flight?
It's testimony to New Zealand's enduring appeal that so many of us still choose to make the trek down to the Land of the Long White Cloud – particularly in the midst of a recession. I'd recommend going just on health grounds, because everything feels so darn safe, wholesome and 100% organic that just being here for a fortnight will surely up my life expectancy by, oh, five minutes.
In the past many of us were drawn here to visit relatives, but now we're just as likely to go for solid holiday reasons: sunshine, empty beaches, unique and rewarding sights and all manner of sporty things to do.
The living proof of this is Mary, my eightysomething mother and travelling companion, who had long nursed a desire to visit the country on the grounds that we had family there. Yet when I came to arrange the itinerary, she was so keen to see as many amazing things as possible that poor old auntie Jackie and assorted fruits still hanging on the family tree got unceremoniously dropped because they would take up too much valuable time. (And if you're reading this, hey, sorry...)
That's why we're in Napier (my call), having had an indulgent sojourn nosing round the Bay of Islands (Mary's choice) in the Northland region of North Island. With its Cotswolds-pretty mission buildings, Maori heritage sites and hassocks adorned with whales and kiwis, this scenic honeypot provides a soft, welcoming and refreshingly Lord of the Rings-free initiation into the gripping adventure story that is New Zealand.
Before that we had dropped in on Samoa, and on the way back we'll have a skyscraping spendfest in Hong Kong. Given that Air New Zealand flies round the world it seemed mad not to take up the circumnavigatory option and, let's face it, once you've decided to boing yourself off to the other side of the world, you're locked into trip-of-a-lifetime, we'd-better-buy-another-memory-card, territory.
Thank goodness, then, that it's all so worth it – although, as we explore Napier, I do have a niggling worry. It seems churlish to mention it, but what are the chances an earthquake might strike again?
"Well, they're due a big one in Wellington," one resident tells me, voicing the age-old idea that everything bad starts in the capital.
"Small ones are happening all the time," another muses with a disdainful shrug. "You come home and all the pictures on the wall are askew."
The doom-inclined should visit the absorbing Hawke's Bay Museum to watch a film of the day the ground "started to roll like a ship at sea", and hear eye-witness accounts. A computer screen gives continuous reports on how New Zealand is "rumbling all the time".
The rebuilding of Napier didn't just introduce a new architectural style – it gave its residents a revitalised sense of character too – what one survivor called "an extra soul". Walk down Marine Parade today, with its splendid avenue of Norfolk pines (that most art deco of trees), bright splodges of municipal busy lizzies, and the lovely pink and white 1935 Soundshell Stage, and you could be in an Antipodean Eastbourne – with the exception that many Kiwis seem regrettably uninterested in dress codes (be prepared for cargo shorts and adventure sandals in the smartest restaurants).
As with another famously earthquake-prone city – San Francisco – there is a sense here that life ought be enjoyed to the full thanks to the special permission bestowed by a past tragedy.
"The strongest tremor I've ever felt was a 5.8," reflects Don Alexander, a veteran guide working for the Art Deco Trust. "We were playing cricket in McLean Park at the time, and the bails just flew off the stumps..."
Bowled out by seismic activity, now that's one for the records.
Essentials
Getting there
Air New Zealand (0800 028 4149; airnewzealand.co.uk) flies daily from London Heathrow to Auckland. Return fares with connections to Napier cost from £969.
Where to stay
The best options are the centrally located, Edwardian-era County Hotel (00 64 6 835 7800; countyhotel.co.nz; doubles £112) or the contemporary Crown Hotel (00 64 6 833 8300; thecrownnapier.co.nz; doubles from £58) in the adjacent port of Ahuriri. For swish self-catering, the Dome (00 64 6 835 0707; thedome.co.nz; £212 a night for an apartment sleeping six) is a duo of luxury penthouses with terrific views set atop the town's 1935 T&G Building. B&Bs are good value. Try the Helm Crag ( 00 64 6 833 7483; helmcrag.com; doubles from £58), or for a full list see hawkesbay.com.
What to do
See artdeconapier.com for themed walks and tours, foodhawkesbay.co.nz for the Hawke's Bay Food Trail, and winehawkesbay.co.nz for a guide to local wineries. Wilderness Safaris (kidnapperssafaris.co.nz) offers off-road excursions into the Cape Kidnappers peninsula. Two good restaurants are Mission Estate (00 64 6 845 9350; missionestate.co.nz) and The Old Church (00 64 6 844 8866; theoldchurch.co.nz), while the Filter Room (thefilterroom.co.nz) serves samples of locally made beers and cider. More information from visit hawkesbay.com and newzealand.com.