Kia ora!

Our stories

Louis

Kia ora!  I’m the born & bred Kiwi in our relationship, delivered in Darfield, where my parents taught, then headed north to Dargaville before settling in the Hutt outside Wellington.  Travel was predominantly local, with family visits to Auckland and the Hokianga.    In 1991, after completing a degree in classical music composition, I headed off to the UK to pursue a career with my band, but ended up in computing and then finance in the City, whilst pursuing Sarah! 

​

During the next couple of decades I worked for pension funds and Hedge funds often traveling the world for work.  In between times we would try to take our two girls on amazing summer and winter holidays, fulfilling our desire always to explore and travel. 

​

After spending about 16 years more than anticipated in the UK, I convinced Sarah, and our daughters Ella and Amy, to move back to New Zealand in 2009.  New life also meant a new start for me returning to music and setting up Ellamy Studios.  Since then I have had the privilege to help other musicians fulfill their visions, and collaborated on some amazing music.   But, after 15 years of this (the longest job I have ever had), it was time for us to return to travel and take the plunge to go full time. 

Sarah

Travel has always been in my blood – my father worked in the airlines and my mother was a stewardess for BOAC when she met him. Growing up we moved to Beirut and then Lisbon before settling back in the home counties of England and gallivanting off on staff rates holidays to exotic destinations (always on stand by and dressed in our Sunday best in case we managed to blag an upgrade!)

After studying at St Andrews I took a belated year off to travel solo around the world in 1988-89 – playing it safe in Boston, San Francisco, Hawaii, Australia, NZ & Singapore. My wanderlust led me to a job in Incentive travel with some fabulous working trips to the Florida Keys, Bermuda, Morocco, Jordan and several European capitals.

Back in London I met Louis in 1994 on the third year of his 2 year OE from NZ. Three years later, having met the family in Auckland, we got married and embarked on the child rearing years. Passing our love of travel onto our two daughters we took them abroad at every opportunity and in 2009 we fulfilled our dreams by emigrating to Auckland.

This move proved to be a life saver for me – getting my first mammogram at 46, 4 years ahead of the UK schedule, they found precancerous dots of DCIS and within 6 weeks I’d had a unilateral mastectomy and come to realise how precious life was -Carpe Diem!

We have actively explored much of the upper north Island, Te Ika a Maui, over the last 15 years, with the odd visit to the South, but for the most part we kept saying, one day we’ll take a sabbatical and explore the “Mainland” more extensively. Finally, late last year, after a dawning realisation that we weren’t getting any younger or fitter, we decided that now was indeed the right time and a fuse was lit… we selected and ordered the van, cleared the house over an eight month period and we are set to leave Auckland on Thursday 12 November for 12-18 months of travel in Te Wai Pounamu!