It started with a big bang, and little balls of colour hurtling into the night sky.
A moment before, at 11.59pm on March 25, New Zealand's Government-ordered, month-long lockdown had begun.
Inside her central Auckland home, Andi Brotherston couldn't believe it when the hush of a mid-week night was interrupted by booms, whistles and bangs.
"It just completely blew my mind," Brotherston says of the moment she realised a neighbour was marking the start of the Covid-19 pandemic-induced shutdown of almost all aspects of normal life by touching flame to fuse.
"You have fireworks in celebration, and I was thinking, 'How in any way is this good?'
Four minutes after the lockdown began, requiring everyone in New Zealand to stay home unless they were an essential worker, using essential services, or taking a walk, bike or scoot in their own neighbourhood, Brotherston shared her disbelief online.
"Some crazy in Ponsonby at 11.59pm just let off a whole bunch of fireworks - like lockdown is something to celebrate," she tweeted.
Fellow war stories trickled in.
"Same on Devonport waterfront," wrote another, while neither a Christchurch woman nor her dogs were impressed by a similarly boisterous nod to the moment in New Zealand history.
The capital could claim no higher ground - a Wellington man answered his door to police officers following up reports of "gunshots". No shots had been fired, just the neighbours' fireworks, he told them.
"#Karori," he tagged his tweet.
But not everyone was displeased.
"Why not make the best of it?" Miles Lacey tweeted, bookending the early morning social media exchange.
Society is always a mix of people who try very hard to follow the rules, people who try very hard not to follow the rules, and people - most of us, we hope - who land somewhere in the middle.
A global emergency, which sparks a national emergency, which upends all our lives, doesn't change that.
It amplifies it, and that's as true at the beginning of a crisis as it is at the end.
Lacey, who knows a bit about tough times as an organiser with the NZ Beneficiaries and Unemployed Workers' Union, understands people cope with change in different ways.
"My approach has been to go for walks with the dog," he told the Herald as he and Jack Russell cross Tanner took their daily stroll.
But if a stash of old bangers does the job for others, he's all good with a few heading skywards.
"What the hell, have a bit of fun with it."
The Prime Minister and the Gloom Shield
In the beginning, many did.
It started, as it so often does, on social media, which was quickly awash with a flood of lockdown memes.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who counts among her achievements banning military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles, extending paid parental leave and increasing the minimum wage, added another string to her bow.
"Jacinda Ardern - the woman that finally ended the Briscoes sale!", quipped one meme in reference to the Government's strict ring-fencing of businesses allowed to operate during the lockdown.
And though Ardern has plenty of fans, they met their match in the "Bloomers", the following spurred by the steady and sure messages from the podium of Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
The daily 1pm media briefings, usually led by Ardern and Bloomfield, were soon appointment viewing or listening for locked-down Kiwis, and the previously low-profile Bloomfield's star rose quickly across the nation's living rooms.
An online petition for the public servant to be our next New Zealander of the Year was just the beginning.
Adoring memes bounced around social media, a self-penned love song was uploaded to YouTube and a cross-stitch pattern hastily designed.
"Ashley Bloomfield - he's our Gloom Shield," the pattern rhymed, its message divided by a shield bearing the yellow stripes of the Government's Covid-19 response material and a centred black heart.
Even the police - whose outgoing commissioner Mike Bush pulled no punches on the eve of the lockdown by warning the nation car trips to the beach were a no-no - joined in the fun with a more light-hearted nod to their chief's message.
"You'll be spending time in your home," their mock horoscope meme - with identical readings for every star sign - promised.
Full House
For some of us, home life soon morphed into an episode of Full House, with mischievous kids and bamboozled parents forced to co-exist exclusively, and almost entirely at home, for 33 long days.
Parents turned homeschool teachers as school gates closed, and New Zealand's internet capacity felt the pinch almost immediately as thousands worked and learned from home.
Internet usage peaked at a record-breaking 3.03 terabytes per second - the equivalent of 600,000 movies being streamed simultaneously - as early as lockdown day 2. The previous record was 2.6Tbps, set during the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Fears of failure were quickly calmed by Chorus, who said the peak network capacity was 3.5Tbps, but some still reported connection problems.
We swapped our work best for trackies and slippers, and looked even sillier when buffering froze our expressions in place during endless Zoom meetings.
Cameos from wandering kids and animals aren't likely to be forgotten anytime soon, among them the unwelcome virtual meeting of a previously unacquainted dog and cat of two Wellington colleagues during one Zoom meeting.
Kiwis juggling homeschooling and jobs may have fewer fond memories of the time their work and home lives collided.
One essential worker woke wrote of waking from a night-shift to 21 new emails from his kids' school - seven per child - while another's patience was tested by emails urging us "not to see this enforced lockdown as negative, but to appreciate all this extra time with our whānau as a gift!".
"The kids are having the time of their lives … but for us it's very stressful trying to both do dumb hours to make sure the kids have someone with them 24/7, and trying to fit in a bit of the school's expectations."
Fresh bread fetish
While some struggled, others were living their best lockdown lives, none more so than those turning the long hours at home into endless loaves of ciabatta, soda and sourdough, and (digitally) making sure their efforts were seen far beyond their own bubbles.
The method of sharing was new, but not the desire to conquer an old favourite - Herald food reviewer and journalist Kim Knight, re-reading David Veart's cooking history book, First Catch Your Weka, noted how "history always repeats".
"Chapter 2: 'Fresh bread in colonial New Zealand became almost a fetish item, a statement of cultural identity as well as a food staple'," she tweeted, as home bakers across the country pulled yet another loaf from the oven.
Less uplifting were early fears of price gouging at the supermarkets - denied by both big chains - but a Government website to dob in unfair prices was promptly set up, receiving 1800 emails in its first four days.
Beyond any feared price hikes, and the long queues to get in the door, was the new challenge of finding ingredients from sometimes bare supermarket shelves.
"Someone quietly let me know when they see flour in the supermarket please," a desperate shopper wrote on numerous Auckland community Facebook groups, a mere five days into lockdown.
Celebs can spot empty shelf opportunities a socially-distant mile away, and cookbook author Chelsea Winter quickly came to the rescue with her beer-fuelled "lockdown loaf".
The recipe replaced hard-to-find yeast with beer, although Winter warned against the unfortunately-named Corona beer.
"For a reason I cannot understand, some people using Corona beer have produced a doughy, undercooked loaf. Go figure? In any case, don't get too fancy here."
Nothing but blue skies
Not everyone was content to stay in the kitchen, especially as one of the bleaker periods in New Zealand history coincided for many Kiwis with blue skies and warm breezes.
Ardern had started our period of national self-isolation with encouraging smiles, telling the nation from the Beehive on the measure's first day that our streets were - only three days since she announced the alert level 4 lockdown - "essentially empty".
"That is a remarkable feat, and I want to thank the nation for that … because ultimately we will only be able to do this if we do it together."
But a rare run of bluebird days across Auckland's notoriously changeable isthmus proved too tempting for city-dwellers unaccustomed to long hours of daylight freedom, and many dipped much more than a toe beneath the waters of the Hauraki Gulf.
Some even dragged their surfboards to the wild shores of the west, a move which would, within 10 days, prompt a law change banning not only surfing, but other outdoor activities, such as hunting, tramping and swimming, all seen as unnecessary risks to the bubbles of emergency services' workers and volunteers.
For many, the experience of a quiet stroll along deserted suburban or small-town streets was enough, and novel, as old freedoms evaporated under the restrictions.
Children, and their thankful mums and dads, scouted out teddies popped into window sills in a nationwide effort to put smiles on wee faces.
Others simply enjoyed a peace which continued from night into day, and into night again.
"It's so quiet out there", Aucklander Niki Harre said of her city suburb in the early days of the lockdown.
"The last three nights I've heard a morepork, for the first time. That's just the most amazing thing."
In sickness, in health
For some, the lockdown was a welcome escape from the rush of regular life. For others, the restrictions brought hardship and heartache from their first day.
Gatherings between those in separate "bubbles" - the description coined by the Prime Minister to describe who we could spend time with during lockdown, almost exclusively people we lived with - were banned.
That meant calling off long-awaited weddings, birthday bashes and the other events that draw us close in happy times.
But it also put a stop to the events that bring us together in sad times: the deathbed farewells, and the funerals and tangihanga so important to the grieving process.
Families were similarly distraught to discover they couldn't always be with loved ones nearing death.
Jess Parkes shared her family's heartache, and called for leniency, after being told only one relative could visit her dying grandfather for 15 minutes each day, and must stand at the foot of the 76-year-old's hospital bed.
"All we want is for him to be comfortable and to not be distressed in his final days," she told the Herald.
"He doesn't deserve to die alone."
The situation prompted former Health and Disability commissioner Ron Paterson to call for "compassion and proportionate responses from health authorities", raising particular concern about the lack of distinction between ailing patients who had Covid-19 and those who didn't.
"We should tread carefully before denying a patient's right to support, for in times of illness and death we all have a fundamental human need to be close to our nearest and dearest."
Funerals and tangihanga were also banned at the start of the lockdown, although four days later rules were broadened to allow those within the bubble of the deceased to attend a service at a funeral home.
Funeral director Fatafehi Tamale, of Tipene Funerals, shared the heartache of her clients, breaking down after telling a woman she could not - in a final act of love - dress her deceased dad.
Clutching a white suit and large tapa cloth given to her by the woman, Fatafehi cried as her boss, filming her, asked about her meeting with the grieving daughter.
"I promised her I will make sure I place this [tapa cloth] - which is what we wear - in the casket. Or for him to wear. I promised that I would take photos of it and send it to them ... so they know we put everything they wanted on their father."
Even the arrival of new life was sometimes tinged with sadness, with mums and babies kept apart from dads and wider family.
Again, it was the most vulnerable who suffered most - Rotorua mum Stacey Brell had to go a step further and leave her premature son, Armani-John Selwyn, in the sole care of hospital staff so she could stay in her home bubble with her two older children and essential worker partner.
Only after the need two weeks later to teach Armani-John to breastfeed - reuniting mother and son - did her tears stop.
"I'd be okay during the day because I have the other kids and I'd keep my mind busy but it was at night-time, when I had that downtime, that I'd cry - just missing him and wanting to be there with him."
When home isn't safe
For other Kiwis there was the trauma of losing their livelihoods, suddenly and unexpectedly, or finding themselves trapped at home with their abusers.
Family violence incidents increased after the lockdown began, including almost 600 calls for help on day four, and police assistant commissioner Sandra Venables said that wouldn't reflect the real, and higher, number of incidents occurring.
Janeta Vasega, a family harm service co-ordinator for Victim Support at Counties Manukau, spoke of her fears for a woman she calls only at work, because the woman's partner monitors her cell phone.
"I haven't heard from her since lockdown began … and there will be a lot of women in that situation."
Thousands of Kiwis also went into lockdown fearing they would not have a job to return to when restrictions eased.
The Government quickly paid out more than $10.4 billion in wage subsidies, benefiting 1.6m workers, and fast-tracked other measures, such as loan guarantees to small and medium businesses.
But for some non-essential businesses, unable to trade during the lockdown, it wasn't enough.
The $11b hospitality industry, which employs 130,000, was among the worst hit.
Pre-lockdown travel restrictions forcing all travellers to self-isolate, and then banning non-resident foreigners completely - turning the tap off completely for the $18b tourism industry - was already costing the industry $6m a week, Restaurant Association chief executive Marisa Bidois said early in the month.
"[This] is now dwarfed by our current estimate of the lockdown loss to the hospitality industry as just over a billion dollars."
But it wasn't just those working for tiny, family-owned businesses who faced redundancy, the big players also struggled to hold on to staff.
Air New Zealand, our spirited "Where to next?" national airline now called "a domestic airline" by its chief executive Greg Foran, shrunk its home network to a handful of cities, and overseas network to 11 routes.
That left a third of their 12,500 workforce facing the axe, with 1500 cabin crew among early planned casualties.
SkyCity Entertainment, meanwhile, laid off 200 workers and warned 700 more they too might go if conditions didn't improve.
Media organisations also felt the pressure of an economy stopped in its tracks, with German-owned Bauer walking away from its Kiwi magazines, including legacy titles The Listener and The New Zealand Woman's Weekly, and more than 230 employees.
A Greater Depression
We were fighting a force we couldn't see, surrounded by an impact we couldn't miss.
PR consultant and lobbyist Matthew Hooton was among the first to ask difficult questions about the social and economic impact of potential future extensions of strict lockdown measures - aimed at saving the lives of older, at-risk, generations - on younger generations.
The lockdown was the right decision, but tough calls lay ahead.
"Even the measures taken to date in New Zealand and overseas risk a depression greater than in the 1930s," Hooton, whose philosophy PhD studies include a focus on intergenerational ethics, wrote in the Herald on April 3.
The worst victims from a depression would be those from low-income backgrounds, with Māori and Pacific people over-represented. Child poverty, family violence and other crime, and youth suicide, would also increase.
"Ardern and all of us have no choice but to take these risks into account while grappling with the ethics of the decisions ahead.
"It may be repulsive to express it explicitly, but a protracted suppression strategy would materially and perhaps permanently damage the lives of the 2m New Zealanders under the age of 30, to briefly maintain the life expectancy of some thousands of people in their 80s."
Later, after Treasury projections showed the unemployment rate could be kept under 10 per cent with extra financial support from the Government, could reach 13.5 per cent if the lockdown remained at four weeks but there was no extra support, or could soar to 26 per cent if the lockdown was extended, Hooton again spoke of hard decisions for the Government if the elimination strategy didn't work in the short-term.
Twenty-six per cent unemployment, or anything like it "can't even be considered", he told Radio New Zealand, noting public health experts' findings that 1991's 11.2 per cent unemployment rate caused "massive harm" to Kiwis' health for 20 years.
"If we need the lockdown to last so long it makes that possible, we have to end the lockdown no matter what … I have a diabetic wife, who would be in big big trouble if she got [Covid-19]. And I also have a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old, and in their circles there has already been one suicide since the lockdown began.
"And that just summarises the situation we're in."
Nark on your neighbour
There could be no doubt how high the stakes were.
Except for the fortunate few, with stable homes, good health and income security - and they likely had strong links to the less fortunate many anyway - it was clear to most the national collective interest was for the lockdown to quickly achieve its aim of stopping the spread of a virus which has, by this week, battered even the richest national economies, infecting more than 3m and killing 211,000 worldwide.
In New Zealand 1476 have tested positive for Covid-19, and 19 have died.
As hospitals set up tents to assess potential Covid-19 patients, cleared wards for an expected influx of cases, and postponed large numbers of elective surgeries and procedures, police, on the first weekend of the lockdown, launched a new online form for the public to report lockdown breaches.
The website crashed within an hour, and within 24 hours had received 4200 reports. By the lockdown's end police had dealt with 5800 lockdown breaches.
King of the covidiots was Raymond Coombs, who, inspired by prank videos on YouTube, uploaded to Facebook footage of himself coughing on supermarket shoppers.
The 38-year-old later pleaded guilty in Christchurch District Court to offensive behaviour, was called an idiot by Ardern and eventually wound up in custody after breaching his bail.
Coombs won sympathy from no one, but former MP Peter Dunne had some for those outed by lockdown curtain-twitchers.
New Zealand had become an "Orwellian" society under the lockdown rules, Dunne said, raising particular concerns about the state of emergency powers allowing unelected officials - the director of civil defence and emergency management, working with the director-general of health and the police commissioner - to "basically run the country".
"The rest - the Government of the day included - are all bit players."
He never expected to see a New Zealand where citizens were encouraged to "snitch" on fellow Kiwis - and had actively done so.
And though he couldn't knock the reduction in Covid-19 cases, there'd be other costs, Dunne said.
"The imposition on people's lifestyles, freedoms, and attitudes to each other, I think is going to be a long-term cost."
Dunne, who was speaking on Newstalk ZB, didn't mention social media.
But it was snitch central after March 25, and the former minister would likely agree with an only-in-lockdown barb delivered by one Facebook user fed up with others' dishing out serves on fellow Kiwis' movements.
"Some people need to worry about their own bubble, instead of others."
'I love 29'
As hoped, Covid-19 infections did fall as the days passed.
With the disease having an incubation period of up to 14 days, Ardern pinpointed April 6 as "D-Day" - when we'd know whether our collective sacrifice was paying off with fewer new cases.
But there would be tough times along the way.
The first came on day five of the lockdown, when Bloomfield announced that 73-year-old West Coast grandmother Anne Guenole, who had earlier tested positive for Covid-19, had died in hospital.
She would not be the last - 18 more, all aged from their 60s to 90s, have succumbed.
Our darkest day saw four deaths announced, all linked to clusters, a word which belonged only in the supermarket cereal aisle before the novel coronavirus swept across the world.
The biggest clusters were spread across the country and their origins represented the variety of daily life - a wedding in Bluff, a school in Auckland, a St Patrick's Day celebration in Matamata, an international cattle conference in Queenstown, a cruise ship visit in Napier and, most deadly, a rest home in Christchurch.
D-Day arrived and the news was good - 67 new or probable cases, down from lockdown single-day peaks of 89 on April 2 and April 5.
Three days later, new daily cases fell to just 29.
Ardern, who had put the country into lockdown after experts told her tens of thousands of New Zealanders could die if measures weren't taken to stop the spread of Covid-19, heaped praise on the nation.
"In the face of the greatest threat to human health we have faced in over a century, Kiwis have quietly and collectively implemented a nationwide wall of defence. You are breaking the chain of transmission, and you did it for each other … you have saved lives."
A tweeter was more succinct.
"I love 29."
Easter and Eggs
So we stayed the course, although some of us needed a bit of a nudge.
While Ardern promised Kiwi kids that the Easter Bunny, along with sidekick the Tooth Fairy, were essential workers, others quickly discovered they themselves weren't.
Fears the long weekend would prove too tempting for some prompted police to set up roadblocks around the country, nabbing 800 breaching the lockdown and resulting in almost 100 convictions.
The bust followed increasing concerns that some people - among them Health Minister David Clark - who fessed up to driving his family 20km to a beach on day 3 of the lockdown, a move which will likely cost him his job post-pandemic - were ignoring the lockdown.
Tourist hotspots quickly erected straightforward signs telling out-of-towners to stay away.
"Don't be an egg this Easter. Stay Home. Save lives," warned one.
At home, kids were busy with their own eggs - Easter-themed works of art which soon joined the teddies in windows for the #NZEggHunt.
Later, it would be poppies - self-drawn, or Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson's haunting Anzac depiction - carefully sellotaped inside windows around the country, as we stood at our gates at dawn on Anzac Day to honour our war dead.
Even the first toddler joined the Easter fun, although a wobble mid-drawing left a similar "masterpiece" on the carpet of Premier House, 22-month-old Neve Gayford's mum, the Prime Minister, said.
It was the little things that helped us get through.
Sometimes they came in the morning, when we listened with pride as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, stricken with Covid-19, thanked former Invercargill nurse Jenny McGee for helping keep him alive in a London hospital intensive care unit.
Sometimes they came in the afternoon, when we got the glad rags out for Hilary Barry's "Formal Friday", or read about marae and temple volunteers giving out food parcels, and essential workers isolating themselves from their families so they could help us.
Sometimes they came in the evening, when Bachelorette Lesina Nakhid-Schuster gave us a blessed Covid-19 free distraction by, gasp, deciding to walk away from the reality matchmaking show a single woman, or when we looked up see a Lufthansa A380 repatriation flight tipping its wings over the lights of downtown Auckland, a last farewell before the long journey home.
We needed it.
Week 3 - a long way in and a long way out - was always going to test our resolve, psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald says.
"For a lot of people there was that initial mix of panic and stress going into lockdown and, for people in positions of privilege, there was a novelty to it."
All three had likely worn off by week three.
"The loss of freedom is a massive sacrifice. Freedom of movement is recognised as a core right. This was a huge adjustment to make."
An apple for the parent
And all the while, the number of new infections kept falling. Easter Sunday brought news of just 18 new infections.
But any satisfaction was short-lived. The following day Bloomfield announced four deaths, our worst single day Covid-19 toll.
"It's a sobering reminder of what's at stake here."
All were elderly and had pre-existing conditions, but the wider community remained rattled.
Many of us wore masks and gloves when outside our bubbles.
And parents, pupils, early childhood educators and teachers expressed fears of infection after the Ministry of Education announced schools would re-open - with safety measures in place - on April 29, MacDonald says.
"The idea of the virus is quite terrifying to people."
Kiwi kids had a brief introduction to distance learning in the first week of the lockdown, before school holidays were propelled forward.
Computers and internet connections were then dispatched in their thousands, and two educational TV channels set up - one sparking the return of kids' TV presenter Suzy Cato - before a million Kiwi kids started a new school term at home.
And it was there they were encouraged to stay, if possible, secretary for education Iona Holsted would later tell parents.
"Parents who can keep children at home should keep them at home. Parents who need to send them to school can do so."
D-Day II
Businesses, meanwhile, were agitating to get tills - online at least - singing again.
On April 17, when new cases dipped to just eight, we got our first indication of what a drop to level 3 would look like.
Businesses able to operate via e-commerce, such as food deliveries or drive-through, got the high sign - good news for Kiwis uploading weepy Tik Tok videos outside KFC's closed doors.
But with face-to-face transactions still banned, restaurants and cafes - unless doing takeaways - found themselves still in limbo.
And our locks would remain untamed - haircuts were still out at level 3, Ardern said.
Surfers, as long as they stayed in their region, were back in business, but boaties weren't.
And bubbles could be extended a little to include close family or caregivers living in the same region.
But level free, it would not be. Soundbite savvy National MP Judith Collins would dub it "level 4 with KFC".
We have to be cautious on exact details, and timing. But experts have put together this image of what the first day of Level 3 could look like pic.twitter.com/lW10p8K75Q
— Chris Keall (@ChrisKeall) April 18, 2020
A drop in level was certainly no invitation to hang out the party lights and invite the neighbourhood over for a celebratory knees-up.
"The main message remains: stay home to save lives," Ardern said.
A Prime Ministerial dampener didn't stop the country waiting a nail-biting four days till 4pm on Monday to hear whether the lockdown would end, as planned, late Wednesday.
"No one's going to be happy, I can guarantee you that," Newstalk ZB host Andrew Dickens told listeners as 4pm ticked closer.
A business owner was among the unhappy, texting Heather Du Plessis-Allan's Drive radio show after a smiling Ardern told the country that while "our team of five million has broken the chain of [Covid-19] transmission", the lockdown would be extended five extra days.
"Waiting to move alert levels next week costs us just two more business days, but gives us much greater long-term health and economic return," Ardern said.
The Prime Minister was "so out of touch", the business owner wrote.
"Our business operates seven days. The extension's cost us five days and we've been ready to go for a month. The Government is so focused on the health side, they have no appreciation for businesses.
"The future is frightening."
An end, and a beginning
Those of us who lived through four and a bit weeks of New Zealand under lockdown will never forget it.
Some chose to mark its arrival by blowing colour into the sky. Some got through it by walking the dog, day after day after day. Some reached the end in despair.
Some didn't make it to the end.
Among them was a 79-year-old Auckland mother and grandmother, whose son shared her last days in a moving diary published in the Herald on the last day of the lockdown.
In heartbreaking detail, the man wrote of early hopes his mother would recover from Covid-19, and the eventual realisation she was going to die.
"I hope it's quick and painless. I wish I didn't have to think about this."
After a nurse called to say his mother had died, the man noted it would soon be Anzac Day.
But he wasn't "making any war analogies", he wrote.
"The tragedy of this pandemic is its own horror. We are beating it back, confident in our united effort. It is swinging hard and lethal in return and every victim is a cherished one, taken too soon.
"I love you mum."
On Monday, at 11.59pm, our 33-day lockdown ended.
In Ponsonby, where Andi Brotherston's neighbours had marked the start of New Zealand's self-isolation with a lot of noise, it was quiet.
Maybe they'd run out of Roman candles and rockets, or maybe they'd run out of oomph.
Brotherston isn't sure, but found herself feeling a little disappointed.
"I would've totally understood them doing it [now]. It is kind of something to celebrate."
Life under level 3 offers little change for many, except the comfort of a new beginning.
And though there were no fireworks in Brotherston's neighbourhood, they flew into the sky in other parts of the city, and beyond.
Level 3 was hard-earned, and the celebration could as easily be as much about welcoming the new beginning as farewelling the old end.
It started with a big bang, and little balls of colour hurtling into the night sky.
WHERE TO GET HELP:
If you are worried about your or someone else's mental health, the best place to get help is your GP or local mental health provider. However, if you or someone else is in danger or endangering others, call police immediately on 111.
OR IF YOU NEED TO TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE:
• 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP) (available 24/7)
• https://www.lifeline.org.nz/services/suicide-crisis-helpline
• YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633
• NEED TO TALK? Free call or text 1737 (available 24/7)
• KIDSLINE: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
• WHATSUP: 0800 942 8787 (1pm to 11pm)
• DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757 or TEXT 4202
• Free 24/7 National Anxiety Helpline (0800 ANXIETY; 0800 269 4389)
• Women's Refuge: Free national crisis line operates 24/7 - 0800 REFUGE or 0800 733 843
www.womensrefuge.org.nz
• Shine, free national helpline 9am- 11pm every day - 0508 744 633
www.2shine.org.nz
• It's Not Ok: Information line 0800 456 450 www.areyouok.org.nz
• Shakti: Providing specialist cultural services for African, Asian and Middle Eastern women and their children. Crisis line 24/7 0800 742 584
• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website