Tag: travel

Melbourne – Our Actual Favourite

Happy Days for me as I’ve been trying to sneak to Melbourne for months and finally got here this weekend. No particular requirement or event to get away this time, but any opportunity to be exposed to anything in the wellness or hospitality sector, is an opportunity to learn and apply new knowledge to our evolving tourism business. 

And that’s exactly what we’ve done. Through our experiences wandering the planet we’ve been able to arrive home and apply the magic that we find meaningful at our tiny farm. Fairly fucking fabulous actually. And the formula really seems to be working as we’ve watched the feedback from our visitors to Matakana Retreat become more and more rapturous and positive.

So today heralds the end to our short but fantastic circuit breaker trip to our favourite Antipodean city. Melbourne sometimes feels far more like home to me than Auckland. It is a place I feel very relaxed, curious, and happy, however our karma with the City of Sails has not ended and indeed appears to have a whole new course to run yet. 

We’ve kept a lid on it for the most part, but we will be adding a beautiful building in the CBD to our list of projects this year. It is a four-story commercial/residential split with space for restaurants, commercial offices, and residential options. The plan is to spend the next five years breathing life and love into the building that was built in 1927. 

A lot of our friends and family are curious why we would want to move downtown into Auckland Central rather than the suburbs. Like us they have seen the downtown suffer for years firstly with the investment in the City Rail Link, then Covid, and now apparently with Auckland Transport’s endless desire to change the entire walking and roading configuration of the city’s streets. Our hope however is that Auckland’s time is finally coming, and that the investments that have been made into the city will start to bear fruit and make better sense over the next 12 – 24 months as the CRL comes online and other infrastructure investments bear fruit.

We know from our time in Melbourne that a city can have ups and downs and be dealt trauma and triumph, but if there is a beating heart of creativity, curiosity and inclusiveness and community, that city can be magic.

Rather than pine for the thriving inner city of Auckland that was our haunt in the 90’s and early 2000’s we have decided to, quite literally, invest in and collaborate with others to create the city of the mid to late 2020’s that we can feel safe, proud and welcome in. Things change, it is the only constant in the universe, so we want to be the change we have seen in city’s and towns across the globe that embrace artists, creatives, diversity, joy and curiosity. 

We cannot quite up sticks and move to Melbourne, although we have every intention of soon finding a bolt hole that we can enjoy and add to our growing tourism portfolio. So we will take lessons and learnings from our frequent visits here and other cities we enjoy, and hope to manifest some of the magic in our home town of Auckland.

I also personally believe that women have the power and ability to not only create life, but work together to breath life into places, spaces and communities. As proof of this conviction, we are going to be custom building a third space that provides affordable entertainment, venue space and lively and energizing events designed for women to join in and feel safe, seen and valued. I cannot single handedly steer the city in any direction, but I know that there is an army of incredibly powerful witches who when they work together, will absolutely manifest and bring forth change, growth and actual magic.

In any case the investment we have made in our small piece of the downtown city is our commitment to being part of the journey of making Auckland a more fun and fabulous destination. Applying the same formula as we did on the farm. Building a place we would (and do) love to be and spend time. And really, doesn’t having a building to play with sound kind of fun? I do have so many creative ideas bubbling over to use the space to build and delight communities of difference in Auckland once we get in there. 

It is now nearly time to go and head off into the city for a last look around before welcoming a childhood friend Kory at the arrivals lounge for just long enough to give her a squeeze as she lands around 1pm and I fly out at 3pm. 

We also have a coffee catch up scheduled with my fabulously flamboyant Melbourne based amiga Krissy at the Victoria market this morning. That’s next on the itinerary.

Have a great Tuesday. Keep an eye out for some sneak peaks into our wonderfully witchy new building. I will be sharing our journey sporadically as we roll up our sleeves and get on with the transformation of our little slice of Tamaki Makaurau. 

Thanks for reading.

Love Sharing Stories – But Some Magic is Just for Me

The cycle of shame over not writing, editing, or attending enough to creative endeavours is my Sisyphus boulder.

While I do not currently earn a living from creative pursuits, I live a life scorched by the flames of curiosity and wonder. I also have the freedom and resources to be doing basically whatever I want, when I wish, where I choose, and only with people I actually adore. Yet, time gets swallowed up with business commitments, children, chores and general drudgery.

This is why we travel. And we travel A LOT. We head off to far flung places most people just don’t think to go so we can steep like a couple of happy little teabags in a hot water of hope, happiness, curiosity and creativity. 

My soulmate and muse Damon exists on a very different plane to me and sees the world through the eyes of an almost minimalist former Buddhist monk. He does not crave or create clutter or confusion. 

These days I am incomprehensibly calmer than I was a decade ago. Yet, still feel drawn to whimsy and probably more excitement than your average middle-aged witch. Also tend toward being compelled to consume trinkets and things as we travel. Purchased a lovely and loud bright orange dress in Santa Barbara. Do I need another dress? Absolutely not. Do I like my new dress? You bet your sweet bippy I do it is cute af. 

dress turned out to be the same color as the sunset on the trip from Houston to Merida.

So now we are ensconced in blissful solitude in a castle-like conversion in the capital of the Yucatan province in Mexico. Merida is the real Mexico I crave, not a touristic town filled with gringos like us. We came here to improve our Spanish and it is a necessity to speak it here. So that is a win.

We are also going to put me in my corset and witchy dress so I can swan around and Damon can photograph me. Love having a partner who is so willing to be silly and childlike with me. We literally play dress up and hide in our rich inner lives in strange and wonderful locations all over the planet.

We always have so many intentions of sharing the incredible moments of change and transformation we enjoy on our travels. Also sharing the rare but real challenges that sometimes arise in our intrepid choices. Honestly, we have some incredible ‘what-the-actual-fuck’ stories and really ought to be sharing those along with our smoother and simpler sojourns. 

We are pretty content most of the time at this stage in our lives. We actively avoid being ensconced in our own or other people’s complex orbits and dynamics as the more people you’ve got in your orbit, the higher the chances of being pulled into orbits of drama or difficulty. We do not shy away from grief or challenging times when they are presented to people we Love. We do avoid most people most of the time though, as we like our own company so very much. Life is predominantly devoid of drama and I tend to make myself scarce at the first sign of convoluted fuckery, decipherable deceit, or any other general hijinx. 

It is definitely by design that I only have four close friends. I am deeply, madly, and importantly in Love with hundreds of humans who have wandered into my life over the years. I would drop everything to support any one of them if I were summoned. But true, trusted, sincere friendships that I chat with consistent regularity (most days) I only have the bandwidth for four. I had more but my fuck around and find out mechanism means there’s been a lot of goodbyes for the sake of self-respect and preservation since I started my healing journey. Nobody nowhere will hear me speak anything but Love and respect for the people who were in my inner orbit once and have since been shut out. Provided they didn’t do anything cruel, conniving or unforgivable. I will speak that truth all day long if someone shit on me. But most of the friendships I have ended in the years since my breakdown have ended because it was time. No anger or animosity, just the dull ache that comes from wanting to reach and share good news or check in to celebrate a win or commiserate over something. And that ache is seasoned with a strong sense of relief as when something special and cherished ends, it always makes room for new adventures and beginnings. I am not a person who regrets letting go. I actually Love this about me. The ability to let go of basically anything or anyone so I have the bandwidth to really show up for what is important and fill up my cup too. 

Last week I took a rare and intense peak into the life and history of one of my four favoured friendships. Auriga brought us on a whirlwind tour of her teenage, formative and young adult life. I want to smash out a stunning update replete with images and insights that will capture with clarity the magic we were exposed to. I’m desperate to deliver with just enough words the closeness and clarity this journey introduced to our friendship. I want to bring the reader along on the funny, harrowing, heart-wrenching, exciting, and incredible journey we went on over four very busy and beautiful days.

But that magic lives in my heart now. And it is mine to have and I doubt I would be able to accurately describe the complex, charming, extraordinary and awe-inspiring magic I was exposed to.

So I won’t. 

I will perhaps write down some thoughts about the two beautiful people I finally met after hearing about them both for years. Auriga’s parents are formidable forces of nature in the most natural and wonderful way. She looked like a chuffed child sitting between them as we enjoyed sushi at a place over on Howard Hughes Drive.

How cute is Auriga and her parents are just lovely. The poodle is named Little Bit and I am more than a little bit obsessed with her she's perfect.

They have already lived long and incredible lives and are both witty, and brilliant and have poetry and pain sewn in their coat pockets from lives well-lived and mistakes made and learned from and stories that would make anyone laugh and cry. I wish them continued long, healthy, magical life. Along with all the other incredible over-achieving magical creatures we met. We need hope more than ever in these uncertain times. I have been decidedly charged up with some of that hope thanks to the magnificent and intelligent Americans I met on this adventure. 

And my heart hurts for them all as the world journey’s farther into patterns that many of us hoped would never be repeated.

Check in with your friends in the USA there’s a lot of feelings being felt right now and supporting mercy, kindness and intelligence is more important than I think it has ever been in my 46 years on this earth.

Thanks for reading.

Rakiura Reflections

This is our fourth, possibly fifth visit to New Zealand’s most remote and Southern island.  A village called Oban sits nestled in Paterson inlet on a beach/bay called Half Moon bay.  There’s about 400 permanent residents on the island, and they definitely all know each other.  That number would include the semi-seasonal travelers who come here to work with RealNZ tour company or score am job at the South Seas hotel for a season.

We brought my youngest son Jamie with us this time.  He will be ten in a couple of weeks. He’s had significantly reduced screen time and a marked increase in time with nature and playing happily on his own at the beach.  This a safe and lovely island where nobody drives more than 50km per hour and people look out for eachother, so we’ve felt confident allowing Jamie to venture down to the beach on his own to build his fortresses along the shoreline.  

This is a wild and often windy/grey island.  It is as far South as you can go in the archipelago of Aotearoa, but still two or more degrees closer to the equator than the vast majority of my country of birth, Canada.  Canada exists almost exclusively above the 49th parallel.  Being here has whet my appetite to disappear into the Canadian Tundra or melt away into obscurity in the Maritimes maybe.  We’d planned to purchase a plot of land and do a biodiversity/eco-tourism project in alignment with the work we are doing in Matkaana. Alas that plot seems to have been sold before we were in a position to purchase, so the oracle is steering our sites North rather than here it seems. And that’s okay. 

We will likely always return to this island regardless of having a project here or not.

The silence and birdsong here is somehow addictive.  The sound of wild kiwi and ruru at night is flanked by the sound of waves lapping on the shore, raindrops in the forest canopy, and deafening silence devoid of human technologies whirring or intrusiveness.  It sends you a little loopy at first, and then there’s a clarity that comes on the third or fourth day here, and the prospect of returning to my high-flying and undeniably stressful existence quite frankly pisses me off.

I like the quiet.  I like being far away from the people and things that annoy me.  Birdsong and crystal clear water feels much better to my weary soul than forecasts, projections, people (including myself) missing deadlines and not hitting targets, or boring insecure assholes showing ineptitude and hubris.  I am so sick of all that shit.  

Lately, I find people are mostly incredibly disappointing.  I’d say that the exceptions to this are my large community of kind and curious people, and of course, the team we have working at the farm.  Our farm team are a motley but magnificent crew indeed.  We’ve seen so much growth across the infrastructure, eco-tourism offering and plantings.  Growing confidence and competencies among the individuals who are involved has also been a joy to behold.  That includes me.  I have a heap to learn about regenerative agriculture and Rongoa still, but it has been an honour and privilege to get this far over the past five years.  I cannot understand why more teams can’t manage to be as clearly meaningfully impactful on other projects.  People seem unwilling to look at themselves or share spotlights, and that seems to be where the trouble lies. Just an observation…

So, back here to Rakliura and the present moment as I write this blog.

As is often the case when we travel the South Island, Damon is related to some of the residents here.  Although not as strong a connection as happens on the West Coast, where even the name Birchfield strikes fear or excitement into the hearts of many local who realizes you are related.  The Birchfield clan are quite famous, or infamous, depending on who you ask.  

Here, however, we are wedded to this island through my father-in-law’s elegant and very charming wife Jen.  Jen’s daughter was adopted, as it was a time when that is what you did if you were a young unwed mother, and she was welcomed into the Leask family fold as a baby and spent a lot of her childhood here in Rakiura in Leask bay.  Jen is incredibly close to her daughter who I believe lives in Invercargill and still has firm ties to the island.  

Aotearoa.  None degrees of separation it seems.  We are all very much connected.

After many visits to the island I have only one true friend here.  An elegant, kind, brilliant artist named Rebecca.  She’s very Southern in her humility and pragmatic approach. Fierce but gentle is the sense that I get, and a very talented artist as well. She has a beautiful family and a very lucky husband.  I finally met him this visit which was a lovely added bonus to our trip.  

What a different life they lead in a village of 400 people on Rakiura. They fish and forage and grow and preserve and are undoubtedly causing a fraction of the carbon footprint our international adventures are polluting this already stretched to her limit planet. They are closer to nature and the ocean and probably better humans compared to the busy, bustling, frequent flying life Damon and I whip around living.  My annual visit to see Rebecca is always a highlight of my year.  I’m not recruiting for any more friends, but feel quite lucky to count her among the few that I have and cherish.

Our time here is drawing to a close and we are heading back to Invercargill on a 8:30am flight tomorrow morning.  

Mixed feelings.  I feel we need to put together a decent post about the weird things that happen in our heads when we are here, and the amazing natural encounters we keep returning to the island to enjoy.  

But for now will just post this pithy little reflection on our time here.

Hope you are having a lovely week, whatever you are up to.  

Thanks for reading.

My Crazy, Curious, Kind, Compassionate, and Rarely Quiet Kids

I’ve had four kids, and am raising three. One lives with my parents as his needs outstrip our ability to manage him. The three hilarious and strangely well-adjusted parasites that remain in the care of my ex-husband, and our formidable and fantastic tribe, make me laugh every single day. They are aged 14, 12, and 5. Two of them have my face, and one looks a bit like Will or Mike (those two look sooooo similar) from Stranger Things. He also looks a little bit like his father did at his age.

Daniel enjoying some deliciousness in 🇯🇵 Japan spring 2019

We are a motley crew. Most of our public outings include dance routines, ad-libbed singing to whatever songs may be wafting through the mall, supermarket or amusement park lucky enough to host the hobbits West. We. Are. Loud. We are kind, complimentary to strangers, observant of hilarity wherever and whenever it presents itself, and we are perfectly happy to catch the eyes and confused or slightly scared looks of strangers. We are a team of tyrants who will not tolerate injustice, insist on honesty, and aren’t afraid to have a laugh at our own expense.

Daniel rocking my vintage Prada shades while Steph makes noise… while I survey the beauty of New Zealand 🇳🇿

I’ve been home now for about four days or so since my last major overseas jaunt for 2019.  The Love I have for my chosen homeland bubbles up and exploded out of me in an expletive laden rant as I traversed through the mighty Waikato on our way to the Bay of Plenty for a rhythmic gymnastics competition that Stephanie-Jane actually kicked some serious ass in.  Coming up over the saddle between the Hauraki plains and BOP sent me raging loudly with such colourful collogues as:

“Jesus Mary AND Joseph Daniel and Steph, just look at those HILLS! They don’t even look real. That hurts my brain. How are we so blessed to live here? OMG! OMG! OMG! Do you see the light beams bouncing off the forest over there? LOOK AT YOUR BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY! LOOK AT IT!”

My enthusiasm is always met with utterly unrelated observations about brain hemispheres, grave social injustices, or, sometimes dark jokes about ennui and depression from Daniel.  Steph is more prone to shrill yelling, because she pretty much yells at the top of her lungs when she wants a thing, until she gets the thing, then simmers down until a wave of desire for the next thing takes hold and the yelling resumes.

Luckily, this bullshit behaviour is reserved only for me.  They don’t even pull out the big guns of assholedness I have been privy to this weekend for their dear old dad.  They save it for me, I am assuming, as a punishment for the vast swathes of time I spend abroad, and a clear reminder that they do indeed, Love me dearly, and my own eccentricities have not gone unobserved; rather clearly noted and expertly simulated with sardonic stealth.  These kids are comic geniuses with very different schticks.  They are also unafraid to speak freely of their fears and feelings, no matter how fucked up either of these things may be at any given time.

Accurate portrayal of me reading their memes

Now, don’t even get me started on my kids’ friends. They are all kinds of clever and quirky and fantastic. There’s something about being the mom who simply does not give a fuck what other people think or say that has earned me a firm foothold of trust and tenderness in the hearts of all of the kids chosen tribes. Well, we’ve kinda established that Daniel pretty much doesn’t have any friends except for Ben (the incredibly detail oriented, and perhaps slightly OCD tour guide who joined us on Daniel’s 14thbirthday trip to Japan) because he’s pretty much only ever had room for one friend at a time for as long as any of us can remember. Steph, on the other hand, has several gaggles of gregarious and gloriously giggly guys and gals. Mostly gals to be fair. Her social circle is vast and varied and she hangs with creative kids who now reside around the planet. Her two major social circles in New Zealand are her Gym girls and her Junior High posse of perfectly pained pre-teens. These girls are shoveling all kinds of shit and insecurities, while Steph wafts wanton through her weeks, shrieking at me and me only when she neeeeeeds something to happen. I adore her very loud friends. They are all taller than me, they are all very clear on the fact they will always have a home and a hug with the super weird West clan. They remind me in many ways of my own group of friends, only far more vanilla. None of the kids nor their social circles have any interest in veering very far off the tracks. They are drug and alcohol free, do not drink coffee and only “spill tea” (this is what their ritual of spilling secrets and sharing their deepest fears and problems among a safe and secure circle). I Love each of these kids like they were family, and for most intents and purposes, they actually are family. We have found each other in a crazy world, and I suspect I will support and cherish them all in one way or another for as long as I breathe.

Then, there are my kids friend’s parents.  Love, respect and earnest strain and parenting pain bind us together.  There’s no need for anyone in the world to know what troubles these kids are facing, nor the lengths their legendary parents go to protecting and guiding the greatness that is contained in their offspring.  But we share our struggles openly, honestly, and without judgement. I suspect the reason my kids’ parents confide in me so readily, is that I am so open with being a complete fuck up a lot of the time.  We are all doing our best, with unique and challenging children.  Some of them are feisty, some shy, some angry, some have a tendency to lie.  But they are all actually really great kids, and not raging too far in the face of social conventions or norms, rather, they are all kids with convictions, unafraid to disagree with the world, their parents, or society.  They even have the ability to respectfully stand up to one another, which, at this stage of development is very rare indeed, as this is the stage in our lives when friends and social acceptance are the holy grail of existence. They’re a good bunch.  I just hope that their disinterest in all the trappings and poor choices presented through peer pressure continues.  

I may be downplaying some of the heavy shit we have been through together over the years.  My kids are far from perfect.  My eldest son is a proper pessimist, daughter is a diva, and my baby boy Jamie has absolutely no ability to use an inside voice in any situation.  He’s possibly the cutest and cuddliest human I have ever met though.  This kid will rage at you for a solid 30-40 seconds when he’s overtired or hangry, and then come bounding up into your arms apologizing for his mean words and expounding his undying adoration for his less than perfect parent (that includes his other mum and dad, the Nanny Lou and her husband Mike).

So, tomorrow I am off again on an epic road trip with two of my goddesses across the country finalizing the details for an international EV extravaganza in November.

Three more nights away from my babies, and home for two nights, then down to Wellington with my magnificent ex-husband Phteven.  This time next year, I have every intention of taking my children out of school for a semester and settling for a month in each of their favourite cities, and just being their mother and writing every day.