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You are 100% right Southwark is not a New Zealand enclave, but please send us an email about it anyway.
You are 100% right Southwark is not a New Zealand enclave, but please send us an email about it anyway.

SocietyAugust 2, 2019

Welcome to Little New Zealand, London, UK

You are 100% right Southwark is not a New Zealand enclave, but please send us an email about it anyway.
You are 100% right Southwark is not a New Zealand enclave, but please send us an email about it anyway.

From Shepherds Bush to Acton, Wimbledon to Wandsworth, and even Hackney, London is sprinkled with New Zealander strongholds, writes Elle Hunt.

I am a little less than halfway through the Hackney Half Marathon when I realise that I haven’t done enough training, and that that was a mistake. Choosing to listen to Louis Theroux’s Desert Island Discs over minimal techno with a fast BPM was also a mistake. But at this point, I realise grimly, the only way out is through. Or by ambulance.

My attention is slipping from Theroux’s deadpan explanation of his pick from the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack to my fast-growing fatigue. To distract myself I start to look fully, frantically into the faces of the crowd cheering from the sidelines. I am surprised to spot someone I know. Is that Nigel?

As soon as I’ve glimpsed him, he’s gone. But the sighting sets me down a rich path of mental inquiry. So is Nigel here in London now? I thought he was still in Auckland, where our mutual friend had introduced us, well, it must have been at least six years ago. At one point, I think, we were Facebook friends. Maybe we still are, unless I culled him. Or he culled me.

I have run nearly a kilometre turning this over in my mind, my leaden legs lifted by these circular thoughts. The route loops back on itself. There’s Nigel again. We make eye contact. I briefly wonder if I am hallucinating.

Then I remember that, no – I’m just in Hackney.

Like any migrant community, New Zealanders in London tend to congregate together in quite specific areas. To quote the sizeable, influential Kiwis in London network, often the unseen hand guiding them all: “For decades our lot have drifted all around West London. Areas like Shepherds Bush, Acton, Hammersmith, Putney, Southfields, Wimbledon, Wandsworth and Clapham are where you’ll find most of us now.” In 2001 a BBC analysis found that 0.7% of the local population of Acton (within the borough of Ealing, west of Charing Cross) was New Zealand-born, making it the area’s fifth-largest migrant population.

Many in these Kiwi enclaves live in small, crowded flats with other Antipodeans – strangers connected through the expat network, united by their being far from home. Often Australians and New Zealanders will flatshare together, their differences put aside to align against the common enemy: London. The same BBC analysis found that six out of the top 10 neighbourhoods with the largest “New Zealand clusters” were also the top neighbourhoods for Australians.

Then, often just as soon as you learn that they are in London, they are gone – their visa up, their money gone, their energy spent. For every “Hey guys, I’m in Acton now!” post, there is another about a “one-way ticket home bought” – vacating a room to be filled, no doubt, by another incoming New Zealander.

The Kiwis in London group’s advice to new arrivals is to “keep an open mind” about where you might live, with “more and more Kiwis branching into East London too”. I see that that is the case whenever I go to Hackney, when I reliably run into New Zealanders I haven’t seen for years. It is like a scene from Dickens: a tale of two cities combined in one, the ghosts of Kiwis past. Nigel was a representative deep cut. A few months earlier I’d been at London Fields and seen the school friend of an ex-, ex-, many times over ex-boyfriend, who I’d last seen at a rooftop party in Auckland around 2010.

Another time I was seated at an outdoor table of a Turkish restaurant, and a woman passed by who, I was pretty sure, I’d lived with briefly in Wellington. But that can’t be Jane, I thought. Jane wasn’t pregnant when I last saw her, seven years ago. That night I spent some time scouring her Facebook profile for clues as to whether she was pregnant and/or in London. Results were inconclusive.

When I haven’t seen someone for years, and in the absence of an expository “life update: I’m moving to London!” post on social media, I am often inclined to second-guess my sightings. In a city of more than 8 million, there’s the statistical unlikelihood of it, for a start. Can that really be Marcus in the corner shop, buying vegetables? Shouldn’t he be asleep, on the other side of the world?

These run-ins have a dreamlike quality, I find, like a peculiarly expat version of “sonder”: the realisation that every stranger you pass on the street are living lives as complex and all-encompassing as your own. When you run into people from your past, thousands of miles removed from what you think of as their context, you are confronted by thoughts of all that has gone on in both your lives since you saw each other last.

At the very least, there was a plane ticket. Maybe a pregnancy. And, in the next hour: a half-marathon. Or a hospitalisation.

Carla Neems died after being hit by a truck in Gisborne. Photo: Supplied
Carla Neems died after being hit by a truck in Gisborne. Photo: Supplied

SocietyAugust 1, 2019

The coroner was meant to explain a tragedy. Instead, he compounded it

Carla Neems died after being hit by a truck in Gisborne. Photo: Supplied
Carla Neems died after being hit by a truck in Gisborne. Photo: Supplied

Public health campaigns constantly encourage parents to have their children walk to school. Yet when the unthinkable happened, a coroner pointed the finger at the parents.

Dion and Fiona Neems have been through every parent’s worst nightmare. Their precious child Carla was killed by a rubbish truck outside her home.

A tragic accident like this one has ripples everywhere. Anyone who has lost a child in their community knows that. Communities rally around the whānau. People try to find the words when there are no words that can ever console grieving parents. Siblings mourn, their lives changed forever. Grandparents, aunties, uncles, best friends and cousins – everyone is left reeling.

When there is such a loss, so big and so unfathomable, questions are asked. Why? How did this happen?

Sometimes an accident is just that. An accident. But we want to know why, so that we might ensure it never happens again, that we might never lose so very much.

This is the role of the coroner. We expect a coroner to be an intelligent and qualified person who can assess an accident and see if lessons can be learned. A coroner is wholly independent, we expect them to order an inquest if necessary, to determine a cause of death. We expect them to investigate when needed. We expect them to maintain records. Set precedence.

We might also expect them to have empathy. Compassion.

Coroner Tim Scott in Gisborne District Court presided over the tragic death of  six-year-old Carla Neems.

He pointed the finger at her parents. She should not have been doing what children all over New Zealand do. For her parents to let her walk to school with her older siblings was, he said, “unacceptable”.

He felt the need to publicly hold them accountable for their daughter’s death. He seems not to register that any parent who lost a child in those circumstances would likely blame themselves – even if they weren’t to blame. Even if they were doing what they thought was right.

His words have echoed throughout the world, with the story being picked up widely and used as the latest talking point on safety, independence, parenting and blame. He surely knew this would happen but decided in that moment, for whatever reason, to let blame and judgement drown out compassion, empathy and grace. He surely knew his remarks would ripple, like Carla’s death, through communities.

The response from Carla’s parents was heartbreaking and unsurprising. They are the words felt by so many parents. They told Stuff they would change anything that happened on May 2, 2017, if it meant Carla was still alive.

For now, they will have to contend with the judgement of Tim Scott and an often cruel public. But I hope they will also know that there are many who send them love today as they cope with this unwanted attention.

And also, that there might be meaningful change for them hidden in the awful headlines.

Scott’s report said there was another way of ensuring Carla’s safety. The Council truck that hit her should have been fitted with proximity alarms. Hopefully, this, the only really useful finding might be acted on.

Fiona and Dion Neem did what countless parents do every day. They weighed the risk and the reward for an activity for their child. They likely listened to the principals around the country who run to the media and complain about “Mums in SUVs” who don’t send their kids to school on their bikes.

They probably heard the incessant crap on talkback radio about independence and resilience in children. Maybe they heard from older generations who insisted that they walked for an hour to school along country roads and kids these days are soft. They might have heard about the studies that suggest children are happier and healthier if they’re given small pockets of age-appropriate independence. This will be part of why schools themselves encourage walking and other active modes constantly. Perhaps they walked to school themselves as kids. Or all the kids in their street marched happily each morning, shrieking with laughter.

Could it have been all of those things? Or just that they knew their child, knew her siblings, and decided that today she would walk in the sunshine.

To face what we truly know is impossible. We are fragile. All of us. We make decisions every day as parents that we hope are the right ones and we do so on a prayer, never knowing what could be coming. We lean on our whānau, our community, our village.

We make ripples with every choice. And we hope that, should the unthinkable happen, we will be surrounded by waves of love that will somehow get us through the impossible.

These days the judgement seems always to come first like a tsunami.

I hope we can make sure the empathy, the compassion, the kindness keeps coming too. And that community responses led with those values can take the place of Scott’s words.

Perhaps a walking school bus. Perhaps a scooter safety programme in schools. Perhaps a commitment by drivers to checking driveways and roads for children. Perhaps a response that will actually go some way to acknowledging the impact of losing Carla.

Turning her parents into targets will never ever do that. Pain on more pain will never heal this loss.

The reflection in those broken waters should look familiar. It is all of us who have ever started the day with a kiss on the cheek and “have a great day at school honey”.

To anyone who has ever watched their child rush away on the wind, believing a community is there with them too.