13/06/2026
April 2012.
A cold Gisborne morning.
My second year in New Zealand, still learning the land, still learning myself. I had just lost my job on the kiwifruit farm.
Downsizing, they said.
But when you’re new to a country, “downsizing” feels like the world shrinking around you. I was picking oranges to get by.
Life felt like survival, nothing more, nothing less.
Then one day at touch rugby, a friend asked,
“Do you want to try pruning? I didn’t know what pruning was.
Didn’t know what forestry meant.
But I knew what it felt like to need a door, any door to open, all I needed was a chance.
So I said yes. Next morning, the boys pulled up.
About seven of them.
We drove from Gisborne to Wairoa, an hour and about twenty minutes of silence and rain tapping the windows.
Everyone slept.
I stayed awake, watching the world blur past, wondering what I was walking into.When we arrived, the foreman asked if I had safety boots.
I didn’t. No boots.
He tossed me a pair without looking twice.
And just like that, my life changed, though I didn’t know it yet.
Ultra‑high pruning.
Eight to nine metres in the air.
A long ladder on my shoulder.
Blackberries taller than me.
Cold biting through my clothes.
Every step felt like a question I didn’t know how to answer. By midday, my body was shaking.
My hands were tired.
My spirit was cracking.
I told myself, “Just finish today. Don’t come back tomorrow.”
I swallowed the tears because pride is quiet, even when pain is loud.
At the end of the day, the foreman asked for tallies.
Everyone had pruned over 100 trees.
I had pruned 26.The boys laughed.
Joked.
Teased.
“Maybe go back to picking oranges.”
“How long before you take off like the rest?”I laughed with them,
but inside, something shifted.
Not anger.
Not shame.
Something deeper.
A promise forming in the dark.
I’m not leaving.
I’m not quitting.
I will stay in this job until every one of you walks away. On the drive home, everyone slept again.
I stayed awake again.
Not from weakness, from the fire that had just been lit inside me.When they dropped me off, the driver asked,
“You coming back tomorrow?”I smiled and said,
“Are you gonna fire me?”Fourteen years later…
I’m still here.
Still climbing.
Still building.
Still proving that the guy who pruned 26 trees on his first day had something no one could see,
HEART.
Every one of those boys moved on.
To them, forestry was just a job.
To me, it became a life.
A calling.
A home.
And that’s the truth about beginnings:
They don’t always look like destiny.
Sometimes they look like pain, struggle, and a day that almost breaks you.But if you stay,
If you hold on when everyone expects you to let go,
You’ll rise into a version of yourself you never imagined.Your hardest day might be the day your purpose is born.
And today…
I stand as a leader of eight men.
They might look at me as their boss,
but I look at myself as proof. Proof that you can come from an unfortunate situation.
Proof that you don’t need to be the smartest, the fastest, or the strongest.
Proof that there doesn’t need to be anything special about you on paper. You can still build something good out of your life.
You can still rise.
You can still become more than anyone expected — even yourself.
Silviculture taught me that. 🫡🌲🌲🌲🌲
