What are your family links with Mercury Bay?
I spent my childhood years in a small mining town in Western Australia (WA). At 13 my family turned up at my Perth boarding school towing a caravan. Surprise! – they said. We have sold up in Hedland and you’re not going back. A couple of months later they brought me to New Zealand on holiday. While I was staying with relatives in the South Island, they rang and said Surprise! We’ve bought a house in a town called Whitianga. You’re not going back. And so, I moved to Mercury Bay in winter 1986.
Me at work in NEOM / Egypt tour, 2023 / Recent portrait
Where are you living now?
I have been based in a construction camp in the Saudi Arabian desert near the Red Sea for two and a half years. I work as a manager for technical writing in the engineering space at NEOM, which is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. It is made up of several regions, including THE LINE, a floating industrial city (Oxagon), a mountain destination and ski resort (Trojena), plus multiple luxury island and coastal resorts in the Gulf of Aqaba. I work with people from 100+ countries who are reimagining what a sustainable future will look like in 20 to 30 years and building it today.
The highlight for me is that 95% of NEOM will be protected for nature, including planting 100 million trees and plants. They are rewilding with fauna long gone from here as well as developing coral nurseries and new ways of growing food.
It’s hot. It’s remote. It’s often challenging. But living where I do gives me the opportunity to travel at least once a month to Europe, Africa, and other Middle Eastern countries.
Tea with Bedouins in the desert / NEOM landscape
When were you living in Mercury Bay ?
I enrolled at MBAS in the middle of 1986. By then it had been several years since the underarm bowling incident, but it was still fresh in the national mindset and it was a tough time to be an Aussie in NZ. But I was quickly ‘Kiwi-ised’ and am now a proud Aus-Kiwi.
I began to make close friends through sport at MBAS and being such a small school, we put our hands up (or Ron Morgan did) to give everything a go and represent the school in any and all sports and activities, even if we were no good at them. Mr and Mrs Shackel, when they came to MBAS, infused the school with their enthusiasm and support for the student council, debating team, and drama productions, for which I think they deserve immense praise and recognition. I got involved with a lot of school council activities, being Head Girl in 1988 and 1989.
What have you been doing since school?
After MBAS, I braved the Hamilton damp to study English Literature and Japanese at Waikato Uni.
My curiosity and innate restlessness have since led to several careers in faraway places, including Tokyo, London and Doha. In 2016, I wandered for a year in the Caribbean writing stories and drinking rum.
I qualified as an editor in 2005 and started in academic publishing, then moved into the oil and gas, mining, and rail construction industries as a technical writer and communications specialist.
My goal is to live between WA and Tokyo and spend my summers in Whitianga.
What would be the achievement you are most proud of?
I am lucky enough to have had a few stories published, and a few years back I won a national Australian writing competition. The prize included a trip to the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, which I finally got to attend last year after a few delays due to Covid.
Have you been back to Whitianga recently? What were your impressions?
My parents (now retired) left Whitianga for a while in the 1990s then returned and bought the Four Square Buffalo Beach. My brother Ty is an Electrical Supervisor in a mining town in Western Australia and my other brother Glen is an Engineering Manager in San Francisco. Ty’s two boys have visited many countries representing NZ in baseball and the youngest (Zach) is on a baseball scholarship in the US. The oldest (Jaden) is now back in NZ completing a builder’s apprenticeship.
I get back to Whitianga every bunch of years. When I do, my friends organise a mini MBAS reunion of sorts. It’s my favourite thing to hang out with the mates I spent those formative years with. No matter how ‘mature’ we get or how responsible we are in our careers, we fall back into the same running commentary of cheap insults from when we were teenagers and there is nothing more hilarious. Every one of my MBAS friends has excelled in life: whether by raising a family or pursuing a career or by just being an awesome person. There is an exceptional resilience that growing up in Whitianga seemed to spark.
Birthday cruise on the Bosphorus, Istanbul, 2023
What were your fondest memories of Mercury Bay?
What I enjoy most when I return to NZ and to Mercury Bay is to get out on the ocean. My dad takes me in his boat to catch fresh fish (and used to dredge for scallops), which my family prepares with home-grown potatoes and veges from their garden, paired with some tasty Marlborough wines. Or we just snorkel and feed the fish at the Te Whanganui-O-Hei Marine Reserve.
Oh, and I love Chuck-a-Chook night at the Mercury Bay Game Fishing Club although I haven’t yet won a chook.
My fondest memories of Mercury Bay are perhaps linked to journeys out of Mercury Bay. The rugby and netball trip to Rarotonga when I was 15, then a Lions Club exchange to Japan the next year.
I am most grateful to the Mercury Bay Lions Club and to my mother for giving me the gift of the exchange. It was just 6 weeks but opened my mind to so many new tastes, ideas, adventures. I have stayed in touch with my host family and recently visited Okinawa to see one of my host sisters. I will visit the other in Yokohama next year.
Who were some of your friends in those early years?
Form 6 photo, 1988
Whiti crew catchup 2022(from left to right): Juliet Clague (Russell), Me, Sonja Larson (Firmin), Sean Muir, Anita Annett (Dowey), Charlie Chilwell, Bodhi Tohill (Bainbridge), Faye White
Whiti crew catchup 2014 (from left to right): Bodhi Tohill (Bainbridge), Sean Muir, Sonja Larson (Firmin), Clinton Hemopo, Anita Annett (Dowey), Mark Rowbotham, Me
Support of Ron Morgan
PROUD TO BE LOCAL — BROUGHT TO YOU BY CFM — IS OUR INSPIRATIONAL FEATURE, HIGHLIGHTING HOME-GROWN COROMANDEL PENINSULA FOLKS DOING WONDERFUL THINGS OUT IN THE WORLD.
Coromind: Coromandel’s Collaborative Magazine
Help us take Coromind Magazine to new heights by becoming a member. Click here
Change the Weather for Your Business: Advertise with Us.
Advertise your business in the whole Hauraki Coromandel in the coolest Coromandel Art Magazine, from Waihi Beach/Paeroa /Thames up to the Great Barrier Island.
Advertise Smarter, Not Harder: Get in Touch
