Waiheke Island is a small island off the coast of Auckland in New Zealand. It used to be like an hour 45 boat ride with water sloshing around your feet, getting wet. The population was quite small. It was all sort of hippies, alternatives, pot growers, pottery makers, and candle makers and farmers. And then modern transportation sort of took over, and now it’s 35 minutes, and you get a coffee, and a croissant and can read the paper.  So now every mother f*cker and their dog commutes. But it’s beautiful.

I was born on the island and I lived there until I was seven or eight. I had heaps of friends and family still there.  Well, what I considered family. I remember spending my younger days naked as a kid.  Why put clothes on unless you went to school? And then, mom would put shoes and a raincoat on me, and I’d take them off as soon as I left the house and I’d be barefoot.

My dad was the doctor on the island.  My mom was the nurse. They owned a little surgery there. My memory of childhood, mom would be like, “Just get home before it’s dark.” And I would disappear into the forest, go to the beach, or go hunting for tadpoles with my friends, and that was just normal.

It’s mindboggling to me now that you can’t even let your kid out of your sight in case they get pinched or hit by a car.  I’m like, “God. Blimey.” Frightening.  And that’s my memories of the island – always being naked, and it was always sunny.  And I think I ate horse manure out of the garden on frequent occasions.  Yep.  That’s the kind of parents I had.

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