Murupara

You moved to the farm in Morrinsville, but where were you growing up beforehand? Where did you spend your earlier years?

So I was born in, in Hamilton, but when I was about four we moved to a little town called Murupara.

And Murupara's, you know, really small, about 3,000 people.

It's a forestry town and it's pretty isolated, unlike, um, Morrinsville.

Uh, and yeah, we, we lived there for my early years in school, and it was pretty formative even though I was quite young.

It was my first- My first observation through a child's eyes of what poverty and inequality, and what job losses can do to a town, and, and harsh experiences, all through a child's lens.

But yeah, it was a place that probably in the end made me quite political.

Growing up in those two places, going from Murupara to Morrinsville, and the different experiences you had, even though you're a little kid, did that experience of, of being in those places and in those communities really shape who you were and who you've become as a person, do you think?

Well, to start, we really have to look at the foundation of her worldview, like you mentioned.

Long before the global fame, she was growing up in Murupara.

Right.

A struggling forestry town in New Zealand during the economic upheaval of the 1980s.

And then West Coast would be the next one.

The cheapest, cheapest, Central North Island, good guess, Murupara in Bay of Plenty.

And

that's average property value is $213,000.

It'll depend on the degree of warmth of the house, access to fresh air, mouldiness.

And also a little bit just to some extent where you live as well, too, because just over the last 18, 20 months, we've been moving out to more rural areas like Murupara and Kaingaroa, where it does get very cold.

And those areas were settled quite a long time when people were planting trees and trees putting up the forests that occupy quite a lot of the mid-North Island.

We did in those days.