why are we here?

In a world full of extraordinary people, we reckon a high percentage of them are our neighbours here in Central Otago. But unless they do actually live next door, are friends or acquaintances, or you engage in a bit of chat on the chairlift, you may never know these colourful characters with intriguing backstories and side-hustles. You won’t know about the lives they are crafting, or have always had, here. Of their trials and tribulations and of all that we have in common.

We’re here to tell those stories. Stories that will inform and motivate the wider community as we go about our day-to-day lives. We want to celebrate the ordinary, everyday goings-on of Central Otago and its extraordinary people. Embracing much of what makes our part of the world so unique

We’re a place for locals and visitors to check out who’s doing what, why and where to play, shop, eat, drink … and we’re stoked you have found us because, as our name clearly suggests, we have so much Incommon.

Who are we?

From an exhausting publishing life in the Big Smoke, Jo Elwin now lives rurally in an old woolshed in Bannockburn, just until the house gets built (two-years and counting). There’s a bedroom and bathroom but no kitchen which, for a food writer, is not ideal so her latest challenge is mastering the cooking of anything on the barbecue, including bread. Which is … err … proving part of her Writer’s Block.

Kelly Brown loves calm. This isn’t the type of calm that’s learned in a book (although she has written one). It’s the type that comes from being thrown in the deep end as a mum after years in a high-performing corporate career and working out how to breathe through all the new challenges and lessons. Kelly’s Note to Self helps to keep us mindful.

Marketer Chegs Chisholm is always off on a tangent – going deep into one rabbit hole or another. She doesn’t just decide to learn a little about a topic or a person, she goes into a spiral of knowledge collection that is as often times as funny as it is interesting. Dive Down the Rabbit Hole with Chegs and marvel at the resulting stream of consciousness that follows.