Contributors to It’s Not about the Bugs Magazine
Not all FROM New Zealand, but all of them have made their lives here. Their range of talents and experience makes for endless inspiration and “how to”. They have stories to tell and tons to share.
Becky Cashman
Becky has been adventuring outdoors since she was 2 years old getting passed along down a mountain from Mum to Dad to Mum. She has over 1000 days of commercial river guiding from difficult to family float trips. It was as a guide for Funyaks on the Dart River outside of Glenorchy that she formulated & tested (with the help of all the guides!) Goodbye Sandfly. There were many years that rock-climbing was life, and thinks it might be about time to let her kids check out life from a climbing harness. After 8 years of working as an NZ registered massage therapist, Becky “settled” down to be a Mum and run Goodbye Sandfly. She lives in Kerikeri with her two children & husband John. While she has lost her taste for adrenalin (mostly!), the outdoors continues to be her source of inspiration. She is absolutely crazy about Love, good food, outdoor kid adventures and natural wellness.
John Sanderson
John spent his childhood in a variety of suburban neighbourhoods. It was a fairly uneventful existence, although there was plenty of opportunity roam the streets in packs of kids, to explore far and wide and go fishing. It was during his career as an avionics technician at Air NZ in Wellington, that he started paddling whitewater. It became what John lived for. An opportunity to take redundancy, took him to Queenstown and the start of a rafting and kayaking way of life. John spent most of the 90’s overseas rafting and kayaking. It was during a season in Nepal, minding his own business, working hard as a good kiwi raft guide does, that he met Becky when they had been assigned to work a trip together. Life would never be the same.
After coming back to Queenstown at the end of the 90’s, all John could think to do was swap seasons and do it all over again- working winters as a ski patroller. Marriage, kids –two, blonde, mischievous and way too smart (like their Mum) , a wonderful few years living in Karamea in summers and Queenstown in winters, has brought him to Kerikeri and his current life as a house husband. John clings precariously to his past life by trying to fit in some heliski guiding in winter.
Leanne Martell
Leanne Martell is the founder and creative muse behind Feel at Home. She lives on the Hibiscus Coast with her husband, 3 boys and 2 dogs, where she runs her business, loves to cook and enjoys nothing more than walking on the beach! Leanneʼs background is in the Complimentary Health professions, working in the regulatory board for Chiropractors in British Columbia; organizing the Continuing Education for them in the areas of Aromatherapy, Modalities, and Massage Therapy. A passion for the natural combined with the desire for the indulgent has led her to create a range of soaps and skincare products to meet both of those needs using only pure essential oils, local organically grown and ethical imported oils. “It is not just about what we use on our skin, itʼs also about how we MAKE what goes on our skin – how it affects our environment, our global community – I want to make products that are safe for our skin, and respectful of our earth – but I also want to feel indulged, and beautiful – I donʼt believe these are mutually exclusive! – I believe that true beauty comes from confidence, and that comes from being able to Feel at Home with who we are.”
Margaret Macbeth
Margaret likes the challenges that have arisen over the 30 years of living on the West Coast of the South Island. She is at the end of the road, on the edge of the land, in a very beautiful place.
The greatest challenge was to create a business that would support her family in this remote location. In 1996 she and her husband, Hamish set up True Blue Organics. Her aim was to grow and distil the only organic Tea Tree oil in New Zealand from Melaleuca alternifolia plants. It has taken a long time but she has now achieved her wish to use the land to produce a crop or product that would be beneficial to people looking for natural therapeutic remedies.
Her lifestyle has taken her back to basics and she has learned a lot of useful skills along the way: how to live simply and sustainably, garden and grow organically, eat healthily, run a small business, participate in the local community. She credits family and friends as being most important of all.
Amanda Dunlop
Mandi became NZ’s first female White Water Raft Guide back in the early 80’s and worked in Adventure Tourism in Queenstown for 3 years before deciding to pursue a passion for Natural Medicine. She trained as a Classical Homeopath, graduating in 1994 then returned to Queenstown to open the Queenstown Homeopathic Clinic which, for the better part of the next 10 years, focused on family health.
While women and children’s health (and a few animals) was her main passion during this time she became involved in sports medicine for endurance and multi sport adventure athletes traveling with teams as support crew for New Zealand and International events. This experience in the field lead to the development of her range of Homeopathic formulas and HCH Formulas was born. Originally aimed at the sports market, Mandi’s Cramp-Stop spray has become a leading product in the treatment of acute muscle cramp – used by anyone who suffers from cramp. Mandi recently moved to Raglan and has become involved with organic growing and the environmental issues which face us today. Working as a volunteer with the Whaingaroa Environment Centre she is running the Heritage and Organic Seed bank for the many people in the local area who grow their own food.
Clare Cosson
Clare has 2/3rds of a Fine Arts Degree, but she was diverted from the final third by a sudden and overwhelming affair with the world outside. She explored it in her kayak, allowing the flow to take her all over the world. Over a decade as a clothing and equipment designer for a major “label”, segued into starting and running her own business with her husband, which they eventually sold (the business that is). She now lives in Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island, works from home “part time” for her business D-fa, designing outdoor apparel for discerning pooches and their owners. Clare has two girls, Georgia (5) and Abby (3) and a husband who loves her deeply.
Dave Ritchie
Dave was looking forward to a career in the health and fitness industry (personal trainer to the stars!) when he went paddling. “Hold the phone! You mean I can get paid to do this?” That’s when his eyes really opened up and he discovered parts and people of the world that challenged his perspective and expanded his horizons beyond anything previously understood. Eventually landing in Hokitika with his wife Clare and two girls Georgia (5) and Abby (3), he now runs the Outdoor Education programme at Tai Poutini Polytechnic. His two little girls now serve the same purpose as that lifestyle of living on the river; keeping him open to new things, constantly refreshing his sense of discovery and reminding him what “relentless” (6:30am, bright and shiny, excited day after day after….you get the picture, I’m sure) really means.
Shelley Guy
Born and bred in Northland, Shelley grew up surrounded by beaches, with the bush never far away. It was a great place to be a kid (she loved walking to school in gumboots!) but as soon as she left school the itchy feet came along. After playing around at university long enough to learn it just wasn’t her thing, Shelley found herself sucked into the wonderful world of rivers and rafting. Rafting led to travel overseas as she followed the seasons, eluding the winters and sticking close to the summers. She worked mostly in Nepal, the States, and Norway; sometimes rafting, sometimes whatever work she could find to get to the next spot. Eventually she’d had enough of constantly moving and arrived back in New Zealand feeling a bit like a stranger in a strange land. Shelley has been back almost 15 years now; after a few years living near Rotorua she currently lives in the mountains of the South Island, where the seasons are distinct, only real men eat quiche, and she can wear gumboots just about everywhere! Shelley still works on rivers and does whatever else she can to keep herself outside. As a lover of the outdoors she can’t think of a better place to be.
Jules Smith
Jules Smith is a founder and director of WashBar – an emerging New Zealand company specialising in natural products for pets. Pets have always been a big part of Jules life – her mother bred Labrador dogs and Siamese and Devon Rex cats. As a child she had pet guinea pigs and even a pet rat. Later in life she became concerned about the long term effects of chemical toxicity on pets. WashBar was born from that concern and a request from a friend to develop a natural skin treatment for her dog.
Jules lives on a 40 acre lifestyle property with her husband Pete, 2 cats, twenty odd cattle and an expanding herd of goats. The property borders the Wairua River in Whangarei and with 1.5 kilometres of river frontage the couple have set about fencing livestock off the waterways and planting hundreds of trees every year. The property generates its own power, “no -we aren’t hippies, quite the reverse. I couldn’t live without the big screen TV, the dishwasher or my espresso machine. You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl …”
Helena Larsson-Allen
Helena was born on an island in Stockholm archipelago in Sweden. She first came to NZ in 1992. Queenstown has been her base since then but she still has very Swedish identity so this has meant lots of travelling back to Sweden and around the world to catch up with family.
Having spent most of her childhood in the outdoors cross-country skiing, ice skating, picking mushrooms, wild berries and swimming has taught her to really enjoy the four seasons and all their beauties.
She is fascinated with human nature and behaviour. She is very passionate about bringing up her kids in the best possible way with healthy food and good values and life skills. She is always looking for the natural way of going about things and does really enjoy the challenge of trying to grow her own veggies in pots on top of the cliff they live on. Life is always busy and never boring in her family.
Dr. Wendy Maddocks-Jennings (RN, DHlthSc)
Dr. Wendy Maddocks-Jennings (RN, DHlthSc) is a registered nurse and aromatherapist who has been involved in many aspects of aromatherapy and health care since 1983. her clinical nursing experiences spanned critical care and emergency nursing as well s acute pain management. Wendy studied Aromatherapy and massage in the UK initially. From there she studied further including with Dr. Peneol in France on an aromatic retreat with Aroma tours, and completed NZ’s first doctoral degree investigating the use of aromatherapy within a clinical setting in New Zealand. Wendy taught aromatherapy and clinical nursing for 15 years and now runs a natural skincare and aromatic consultancy/education company, MJ Health Ltd. She edits Sharing Aromatherapy, the NZ register of Holistic Aromatherapists Journal, and has published widely in various aromatherapy publications over the last 15 years.