(Pictured left) Russell’s about a four-hour drive from Auckland – well, it took us that time anyway about the same time to get from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, except the scenery is distinctly different.

I love the New Zealand landscape – it’s like a hotch-potch of everything. One country, many worlds. A bit of Wales with its rolling hills, a bit of Europe with its alpine feel, a bit of Hawaii with its coastal scenery …

To get to Russell, you have to take a vehicular ferry across. The landscape in the Bay of Islands itself reminds me of the Palawan area in the Philippines, full of little islands everywhere.

Looking out over the water at Russell yesterday evening, I tried to imagine what the early immigrants must have thought when they landed here and how really we, citizens of Planet Earth, are all a universe of emigrants.

We all came from somewhere – a place where we were born and then, by a twist of fate or circumstances, we find ourselves somewhere else.

In Sydney, on the way to the airport, I met the first Hainanese taxi driver I’ve ever encountered outside Singapore or Malaysia. We were chatting away when he asked me where I was from and what dialect I spoke and when I said, Hainanese, we nearly had an accident.

His jaw dropped and he turned round to face me. “Really? Really?” he kept repeating. I think I too was the first Hainanese customer he’s ever had.

His father had left Hainan about the same time as mine except his boat took him to Vietnam while my dad landed in Penang, Malaysia. His uncle (his father’s brother) who left at the same time emigrated to Singapore and now lives in Outram Park.

“You’re lucky,” he told me. “We had a tough life in Vietnam.” In the early 70s, his family were among the boat people who fled Vietnam and ended up in Australia.

His father made his first trip back to Hainan island about 10 years ago and two weeks after his return to Australia, passed away. “I think he wanted to see his home one last time,” he said in dialect.

The only person he speaks Hainanese with now is his mother who lives with him and his family and so he chatted with me in dialect till I told him I was off to New Zealand.

“Across the ditch?” he said in true Aussie twang. “It’s so boring there.”

Acoss the ditch, in Auckland, I was picked up by a taxi driver from Punjab, who had moved to New Zealand about 12 years ago. His whole family’s now in the land of the long white cloud.

“It’s so peaceful here, India has too many people,” he said. Next year, he will return to Punjab to find a wife.

His quest for a life partner reminded me of another story I had heard in Sydney. A German woman, right after the second world war, was looking to emigrate. Her choice was either Canada or Australia.

Around that time, she watched a documentary about Australia, saw images of Sydney and made her decision. She moved to Australia, married and had a family. After her husband died, she met someone else – they fell in love and stayed together till he died some seven years ago.

Turned out her second husband was the man who made the film that made her choose Australia.

See, love does make the world go round.

Featured image credit (love): Ockra/iStock