Since then, he's walked south from Auckland International Airport, headed to Thames and looped the top of the Coromandel Peninsula before heading south.
He's left behind a family, "including a mum who thinks I've totally lost my mind". She's aged 84. "I'll probably never see her again, but you never know."
He walks 35km in a day when he's focused on covering ground. Other days, it might be just 15km. He has enough money for an emergency return flight to Australia but relies on the kindness of strangers or the side of the road. His preferred camping places, he says with a grin, are next to signs which say "no freedom camping, but not so close I can be seen".
He talks of his mission to balance peace and freedom - a utopian goal which has vanished under the complexities of modern life.
"There are things in the world we have to stop doing because we are so far out of balance," said Mr Thomas, who prefers to be known as Peter Walkingourworld.
It is the US to which Mr Thomas is heading. After New Zealand he wants to island hop as a crew member on a yacht across the Pacific before heading to South America.
Ever the media professional, he has a strategy for arriving in the US. Coverage like this article will grow, he says, as he covers more ground. By the time he has walked to the US, he hopes he will attract enough interest to have Americans listen to his message.
But it is the message which must compel, he says, not him. "I have only one person I can insist takes radical change - and that's me."
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