RETREAT: What is it that Kiwis love about the classic New Zealand holiday home?

Labour Weekend kicks off high season at the bach, and sparks a peculiarly Kiwi conundrum. What is it we love about the classic New Zealand holiday home?

Regretfully,I have no memories of my earliest bach holidays. A hairless, gummy baby, almost as soon as I arrived I reportedly spent many idle hours at my grandparent's bach on the wet edges of Lake Rotoiti, which elbows up to its bigger sibling, Lake Rotorua, in the western Bay of Plenty.

I know the bach, with its pine table and coloured aluminium tumblers only from photos.

As I grew, the details in the pictures change subtly. Here I am at about 18-months-old in my highchair at Christmas dinner. I have teeth but hair is still lacking.

Behind me, a small detail on the deck hints at the future – there is chicken wire rolled over the wrought iron railings to stop a toddler slipping through, tumbling down the lawn and, plop, over the edge into the lake.

From there, it would be a short, swift ride with the current down and over the Okere Falls.

This scenario apparently played on the minds of concerned adult parties. When a second grandchild appeared the decision was made to sell the bach, largely on the grounds it was not what we'd now call "family friendly".

If it was pretty much my fault the bach became history, no-one seemed to hold a grudge. My grandparents became fans of cruises and in our household we hooked a caravan to the back of the Falcon and went north, south, east, west.

When the subject of having a bach came up, my parents would cheerfully say "who needs more lawns to mow?" and point out the benefits of being able to pick a different holiday spot each year, rather than feel duty bound to "use" a bach.

Kiwis I've talked to about baches fall roughly into two camps. One group would love to either own or have regular use of one; and the other think it stifling to feel obligated to return to the same place year in, year out.

I am firmly in the first camp. If I could afford it – and it's not something too many accountants seem to recommend as a path to wealth creation – I'd buy a bach tomorrow.

I'm not sure where, yet, but I know why. I want a retreat, a place to go on a whim for a quick weekend or a long, lazy summer. A place that's balm for the soul, where even the mowing isn't a chore.

And after years of renting other people's places, I want to have my things around me. Leave my books on the shelf, hang my wetsuit in the shed and sit in the sun drinking tea out of my cups.

(I actually have the cups already, in storage.There are a couple of boxes marked "Bach". One has blankets my Nan crocheted that would be perfect for winter days on the couch.)

And like the would-be owners versus gallivanters, there are two sorts of baches these days – "baches" and "holiday houses". From where I sit on the nana-rugged couch, a bach can be generations old or finished last week but it has simplicity to it; it's spare of extraneous detail, light on fuss and frills.

Sand hosed off feet before entering is as formal as it gets. Cars park on the grass amid a tent city that appears in early January.

A "holiday house" is another house, though further away from the kids' schools. It has an induction hob, a wine chiller and garaging for four SUVs.

It's glamorous and shiny and reminiscent of a five-star hotel. While you might be able to relax there, I'd be feeling the pressure to keep it immaculate (unlike a hotel, there's no team of housekeepers).

When I was researching The Kiwi Bach Companion, I tried to find out from officialdom how many baches, cribs or holiday homes there are in New Zealand.

The answer? We have no idea, but 50,000 has been suggested as being within the realms of possibility.

That roughly translates to one bach per 100 people but cold numbers don't calculate the warmth of tribal connections.

Just think of the people you know that mention a week at their auntie's bach, or their turn at the lodge their grandad built or tell you about this Christmas when there'll be 23 of them staying at the in-laws' fishing retreat and can they borrow your tent?

And that doesn't even begin to count the numbers who'll rent a bach for their holidays, getting anticipatory pleasure from the online searching for the perfect spot.

As outright bach ownership – like home ownership – rockets past the reach of many, retaining a getaway within the extended family becomes even more pluralistic as no-one can afford to buy the place outright nor replace it with the divvied up cash after the sale.

I did once read that like a family business, a bach will often last only three generations. One generation to build it, the next to enjoy it, but when those children grow up and partner up the new family members don't have the emotional investment and fail to view it with a rosy hue.

Sometimes the solution is that the later generations buy into another property, close to the original compound but at a remove that allows some personal space.

Long after our family's slippery foothold on Lake Rotoiti had gone, we were in the north of the North Island, on a day trip from where our caravan was parked. Our destination was a bach friends were renting on a near-deserted bay.

There were about a dozen doughty cottages and a few newer Lockwoods beside a small camping ground with a shop that sold warm Spaceman drinks and Archie comics.

From our eye-rolling perspective from the backseat of the Falcon, the place appeared to my sisters and I to have little merit apart from being somewhere to swim.

We were mystified about why the adults were so enthused about this end of the road-to-nowhere.

Now, I realise it was close to nirvana. I will make a trip there again sometime, although I am more than a little nervous of what it will have become.

Those lovely, laid-back scrappy baches may well now be palaces nudging up against their neighbours, the camping ground apartments and the shop will stock balsamic vinegar and Martha Stewart.

But hopefully somewhere among it, there will be the holdouts, a few small slices of my Kiwi heaven.