Islands

As storytelling goes, it is perfect. It is great fun to try and understand the criminal nomad life of fugitive Tom Phillips. They are speaking English! There is enough of a history and picture–video–to reasonably understand what is going on although much is shielded in family court. Life in this part of New Zealand is the wild card that sets it apart from, for instance, the Owl Bar killings in Montana. Mental health is always a common denominator.

This is the part for which I have found nothing by claiming to be knowledgeable sitting in Colorado on a computer. Catherine Phillips, I learned from local stations like Stuff and NZHerald, had ‘law enforcement issues’ also since or prior. The children lived with Tom Phillips and were homeschooled. Things were already brewing and he was born and raised, the father, and strongly independent. Not that it matters much now, we don’t know how things started.

What we do know, if one looks, is the anthropology or culture. A forest within an island: it is an isolated, us against the world place and people. As gorgeous and as unspoiled (as we write in the U.S., not unspoilt) as can be, it is not thriving. New Zealand as a whole is only 5.3 million people and it is shrinking annually at 124,500 residents who appear to be citizens; in other words, they are not migrants or refugees. The sea is rising, jobs are diminishing, and it is expensive.

It is not about the natives or beauty or history, it is about the now.

Again, we don’t know how or why it started. We can glean it started over the kids and as a result of the marriage. The Phillips family owns 551 hectars (1,362 acres) of “paddock.” The area known as Western Waikato has a dense forest that is 400 sq kilometers or 155 square miles (approximately 12×12 miles). With the abandoned ute/Toyota Hilux on the beach, the bank robbery, and the other sightings (‘here. you dropped some money’), the police were after them. Four people including three young and likely stationary children! They charged him with “wasting police resources.”

Is Marokopa an idyllic place to live or even retire to? It seems like a contentious even hostile place. And it is getting worse.

My pre-education includes Martin Clunes’ Islands of Britain and this look at life in the Hallig Islands. I confess I have never been to New Zealand or Australia.

UPDATE: Finish reading the Wiki! Catherine Phillips has two older daughters from a previous relationship. Jubilee Dawson and Storm.