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54hrs
After a 54-hour journey, I’m safely back in Australia. And it’s, so, weird. On the one hand, over the past year, everything’s changed for me; on the other, Sydney is more or less exactly as I left it. It is amazing to have food I like again, though: hello, raisin toast, snack chocolate, nudie smoothies, Thai…
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The Airport Connection
Finally, I’m getting to the New Zealand blog posts! Things have been a little crazy since getting back—after ten days of no phone and no internet, I re-entered a world of being available seemingly 24/7, a world in which I’d just published a book. Apparently this leads to obligations—who knew? Plus, I’ve just started my…
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Lord of the Forest
I want to precede this post by saying that I am not Maori, I am not Kiwi, and I am therefore godawful at remembering the names of places in New Zealand. As such, I have next to me a pile of six maps of North Island, and who even knows how many brochures. I realised in…
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Small Steps
This post’s featured image: an entirely accurate representation of New Zealand’s roads. Day three started with waking up in a car park in Paihia, a town in the Bay of Islands. Our ambition for the day was to do the ‘Bay Beauty’ circle walk, a relatively flat hike of around 23km (map here). There were going…
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Drooving and Glow-worms
“Hey lady—your husband droov off!”. It was the start of day four of our Kiwiland adventure, and a lady in the petrol station was yelling after me. Incidentally, I wasn’t sure whether I found the ‘husband’ or ‘droov’ part funnier. She then flagged me down again, to give me a free little plastic toy—I must…