OPPORTUNITY IS A WHOLE NEW ISLAND

I have a little secret to share with you… life doesn’t always go according to plan. My parents separated when I was 8 years old and by the time I was turning 12, it truly was time to inject some manliness and move to live with my father. Thing is, he was on a whole other island that Maui fished up. Moving to the North Island was a very unsettling experience. It was an opportunity to re-invent myself, a process that didn’t work so well for me -apparently if you are going to impress people with stories of your amazing sporting abilities, it would help to be able to back them up with ACTUAL sporting abilities. I tend to joke about my Central Otago roots by saying that I saw my first Maori when I moved to Palmerston North. Whilst this is a complete over-statement as you can imagine, the immensely different cultural dynamic of a North Island city was foundation-shaking. A bit of a blur really.

This photo is taken at Oriental Bay in Wellington. An abstract image that plays with both light, shape and colour - a fitting metaphor for the transition from country boy to whatever it is living in Palmy makes you.