PHOTOGRAPHS: PREVIOUS PAGE, BEN ASSADO; GETTY IMAGES; DOMINIC HALL PHOTOGRAPHY; MOUNT COOK LAKESIDE RETREAT
This is my first, star-filled night on Aotea, the Maori name for Great Barrier Island. Jet-lagged and wide awake, I recall the words I’d whispered to the ancestors of this land before my trip: that I was coming to honour them and I hoped they might guide me on my journey.
I leave my bed at Trillium Lodge, high on a hilltop amid native bush on this off-grid, solar-powered isle, and tiptoe onto the viewing deck. Beneath me is a quiet harbour - the island sits on the edge of a vast, protected marine park - and I can taste peace. All is silent, as velvety as the night sky. The ghostly white ribbon above me is the Milky Way. Some 800 years ago, those stars guided the Maori people, who rowed their great waka, or migration canoes, from the South Pacific to ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’ or Aotearoa - New Zealand.