Taniwha and Moon in rust

My name is Tama Noa Noa, but I have always been known as Noa Noa, Tahitian for 'the sweet fragrance of spring flowers borne on the wind'. 

For being sweet I cannot vouch, as sweetness is a subjective flavour, but as for the wind, well the windy fingers of Tawhirimatea have wrapped themselves around my existence and helped shape who I am. 

Windblown by a whirlwind mother and a South Seas-dreaming father, grown in the windiest of cities this side of the equator, talking in two tongues like a fish of two waters, I hold fast to life like a Pohutukawa tree’s roots that coil themselves around the crags of our coastline, challenging adversity and creating beauty in the sunshine months. 

I am of Mori and Germn descent (both words that need to be spelt with a flower to give them the right kind of fragrance) and live and work overlooking the wild and windy seas of the south coast of Wellington, New Zealand. 

My life is filled with love. I am mother to my gorgeous nine-year-old son and I am currently being the mother oven for both my own and my new partner’s second child, due in January of 2010. 

I am a teacher by day, an anthropologist by training, and an artist and writer when the moments are left free of other distractions.