Bay of Islands

I believe there was one at Patararu.

And then we even had one team come from the Bay of Islands.

So that's how I started.

And I didn't know what wood chopping was.

Because around that time, Maureen again, Maureen Lander had put out, she was part of a group that was organising an exhibition called X Marks up in Whangarei.

And yeah, they were putting out an open call to artists to respond to um this little letter that had was on record of being sent to the church missionary society in 1821 and it mentions a girl a maori girl called audio who has been living with the kings upwards of three years in the bay of islands and it had included this little embroidery sampler so it mentions the sampler but the sampler itself was missing so the open call to artists was well what did that sampler look like? What do you think it looked like? And so because I was in my mind, I was in Pūkaha and I was making the speculative embroidery, I was like,

well,

maybe

Yeah, and so that was my contribution was this for that exhibition was this kōhui a manu and then I wanted to keep that story going from that moment and to turn it into...

I mean, the invitation that I got from my publishers, from Balamohan and Erena Shingare, was to put together a collection of short stories, and that's how it started.

And so I had thought, okay, well, I'll just write a story that connects Ōreo up to the Bay of Islands and loosely associate it.

And then after the first couple of short stories I sent them, I started realising that it was getting harder and harder to whakakape every story as its own complete entity and I wanted to keep them going and so had a chat with them about it and they were really open and happy to the idea of orientating it more towards the novel.

So she works for Sky and she'd been working in Blenheim where there is a Macana.

Because I said, have you been to the Bay of Islands? Because that's the only other place you can get it.

And she said, no, no, Blenheim.

I said, damn, girl.

Um, w- uh, we did, um...

The other really big race that we had in New Zealand when, when it was all in its first flush, which is the race that's coming back next year, is in the Bay of Islands.

And so this is, this is wonderful for swimrun.

So the Wanaka race was this sort of bay format that I was talking about.

You swim across lots of bays, and then maybe across the lake once.

Um, but the Bay of Islands, you start in the treaty grounds in, um, uh, Waitangi, and then cut across a creek, run down to Pahia, swim across the inlet, run across to Russell, and then you just swim north out through the archipelago.

So you're going from island to island, and you, you finish at a island called Urupukapuka, um, which has a sort of tourist thing on it where you can have a barbecue and everything.

And then you get the tourist boat home, and the tourist boat takes an hour to get from the island to Pahia, and you think We've done all of this under our own steam today

You know,

and like, so while he's frothing on that, and I mean, we live in the Bay of Islands, so most of the dads, you know, because he played rugby like most kids do, and I grew up playing rugby, and I've always said, you know, my If I have a son, he can play any sport that he wants so long as it's rugby.

It's a national tradition of ours to force our kids to play rugby whether they want to or not.

And so all the rugby dads on the sideline, I would say, sure, when he was in like under 12s or under 14s or something, I would say 80% of the boys in his team had caught a marlin and sure had it.

And post-COVID, we've certainly seen the deer population for browsers a lot higher than it has been.

More access to the Bay of Islands as its airport gains more flexibility.

Government changes coming into force tomorrow scrap the one-size-fits-all length requirements for emergency stopping space at the end of a runway.

Far North Mayor Moko Tapania says the Bay of Islands Airport can now apply to extend its runway and accommodate more types of aircraft.

He says this will provide another stable connection into the region.

Mayor Tapania says their transport links come under serious pressure whenever significant storms hit.