Pawarenga

Taking the tamariki home.

J & J

We are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”

Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking

// fossicking //

Treasure hunting at Owenga Beach, Rēkohu (Chatham Island)

What to do when the ******* is gone // Popshot Romance Issue

"What to do when the ******* is gone" is in the latest issue (The Romance Issue) of Popshot Magazine: The Illustrated Magazine of New Writing with beautiful illustrations by Michael Parkin.

// Kiwi Diary 2018 //

A few of my photographs in the 2018 Kiwi Diary.   Courtesy of Rēkohu (Chatham Island).

You can purchase a copy via Etsy x

// Port Hutt //

Port Hutt

I take my Aunty to see the shipwrecks at Port Hutt

When we close the truck doors, small birds fly away from the top of a caravan without wheels

There’s three of them, I say as we drive down towards the coast

One lies next to the wharf; its flaking pale blue exterior betrays the rot.

The other, further down the beach, is a meeting spot for birds.

The third adorns the tired shore across the bay.

Look, hon, she says, after some time sweeping her hands across the detritus. 

She is turning a piece of paua shell in her fingers.

A bird flies over our heads.

You could never replicate those colours, she is saying, never reproduce them in any kind of art form.

But all I can see is how much her hands look like mine.