Taonga
Charlotte Feehan
In the wake of last year and the intensity of Covid-19 one of the things I treasure most is being back home and able to see my family regularly.
At the start of last year, both my sister and myself were overseas. Most of my family were here but were all quite far apart. My sister got back first just before the first lockdown. I was six months behind that, sticking it out in Melbourne. The only one left outside of New Zealand.
In the last few weeks before coming home the reality of being so far away dawned on me. I wasn't just a three-hour flight away, it was three hours and two weeks. In Australia I had that chance to be somewhere new and different and doing cool things but with the opportunity to come home if and when I needed. But when Covid hit, the reality was that I may as well have been on the other side of the world.
I had been working with Deeds Brewing when the pandemic hit. I was made redundant straight away and because of the nature of my contract and as a New Zealand citizen I wasn't entitled to any government support. After several months of bouncing between roles and being made redundant several more times I got a job doing furniture removals.
The irony is that we were surprisingly busy despite the lockdown. Though lots of people were moving into bigger places to accommodate working from home, it turned out that a lot of people were moving to get away from people they'd been locked down with. We soon learned not to ask people if this is a good move or not a good move.