A Supreme Dream

I’m from Te Tauihu. I grew up mostly in Marlborough, and it’s funny because there are eight iwi here and I whakapapa to six of them on my dad’s side. The pā down at the Wairau Bar is one of the earliest known settlements in New Zealand, so we’ve been here for nearly eight hundred years. The European side of my dad’s family were whalers here since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and my mum’s family were dairy farmers here, or farmers of some kind since the late 1800s. So, quite literally, I am rooted here on both sides of my family. I was quite little when I lived on the farm. When my parents moved away from it, I’d go and spend time with my grandfather out on the farm, but I didn’t really do a lot of the farm work – it was more my siblings who were interested in milking.

It sounds very cliché, but I used to like reading a lot, and then from reading I’d watch a lot of serious TV. I wasn’t really into children’s shows – I watched Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, because I always wanted to do criminal law. There was this one episode, where the assistant district attorney had just secured a conviction for a rapist, and she looked at the victim as the guy was led away, and that look on her face of satisfaction, for me, was like, “I want that feeling. I want to do that.” And it became a kind of obsession after that. Gascoigne Wicks were the lawyers that my family used – they were my parents’ lawyers, they were my mother’s family’s lawyers, they were my father’s family’s lawyers – so I was like, “When I’m older, I’m going to be a lawyer, and I’m going to work for Gascoigne Wicks.” It’s one of the oldest law firms in Marlborough, and I’m here now, working where I said I was going to!

For the first four years, I was working here in Marlborough from Monday to Friday, then flying back to the Wairarapa where my husband lived. It was really only after lockdown that we decided I’d stay and look to progress my career here. We flew down, looked at a house, made an offer, and it was accepted the next day. When we were packing up the house, I was feeling really sick and I thought it was just the stress of flying back and forth ever weekend, or maybe Covid because my husband wasn’t feeling that well either… turned out I was pregnant and had hyperemesis! I’ve been really fortunate that my employer has been so fantastic and flexible with both my pregnancies. I came back after four months with my oldest and had a five-month hearing in Auckland, but I didn’t want to be away from him. So they basically set up an entire electronic court room for me here, and I only had to fly up when I actually had to be there.

Recently, I went to the Supreme Court to set law in New Zealand as to whether or not copyright that’s earned during a relationship is relationship property to be divided at separation. In the lower courts, you have one judge, and I’ve been to the Court of Appeal before, which is a little more intimidating because you have three judges; but on the Supreme Court, you’ve got five – and these are the highest judges in the country. They sit in a half circle in front of you, slightly elevated, and usually livestream the whole thing. I don’t like being in photos and I don’t like being on camera, so knowing that it wasn’t just the people in the courtroom listening to you, but anyone who wanted to watch – that was a bit more intimidating!

I was thinking about it recently, how connected I am to this place. Even the house that we bought here, it’s this pre-1915 lovely old double-brick villa, and it’s like, “Wow, I really have chosen to cement myself here!” As a child, I was really excited that my parents wanted to move away, because I just thought it was a shitty little town and I was never coming back. But as an adult, you realise it’s actually really quite nice, and I think it’s really cool that we are back, that I’m living my childhood dream, and I’m raising another generation here – it’s good to be back home again.

Glossary. Iwi, extended kinship group. Pā, fortified village. Te Tauihu, the top of the South Island. Whakapapa, genealogy.