20 YEARS OF GOOD TIMES
‘You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’—the old adage has never rung more true than it has over the past couple of months here in New Zealand. We’ve quickly had to face the reality that everything that we take for granted in our day-to-day lives—the complete freedom, the assumed stability of the status quo, and the access to anything we could ever want (providing we’ve got the money, of course)—just isn’t guaranteed. We’ve become too complacent and unappreciative of all we have in this incredibly beautiful, safe, and inclusive country, and, for Kiwis like us, the postponement of Repco Beach Hop 20 and the accompanying fallout has made all that painfully obvious.
A few months ago, the idea of Beach Hop not taking place would have seemed ludicrous—beyond comprehension. Even as rumours of event cancellations began to surface in early March, such a course of action still seemed like an impossibility for our beloved week away from it all in the Coromandel. For 20 years, the Hop has been a beacon of escapism for the
