I'm back!

Back from the hikoi and back on the air. I spent all of last week doing a travelling family reunion. Descendants of my G G Grandparents Kotiro Hinerangi and Alexander Gray gathered from all over the country and overseas to visit places of significance to the family. We started in my backyard, Normanby down in St Taranaki then travelled up to Rotorua, on through Auckland and up to Waima and Russell in the Hokianga/Northland. It was a fabulous week and I now have a whole tree full of cousins and aunties and uncles that I never knew about before including this lot. The photo was taken at the rugby club where we stayed in Rotorua which was turned into a temporary marae for our stay, if you look carefully you can see the mattresses and pillows stacked in the background.

We stayed on marae the whole way and I can tell you that I come from a family of champion snorers including some juniors aiming for the 'best new talent' award. God bless the person who invented ear plugs!


Our last stop was a day trip to Russell where Kotiro and Alexander are buried. The quickest way to get there is the ferry from Pihia and on our way back we saw these waka that were practicing for Waitangi day celebrations.