The British High Commissioner to New Zealand made her first visit to the city yesterday since she assumed the role in August 2022.
She spoke to the Otago Daily Times just before hosting a special Burns Night at Larnach Castle, which featured several dignitaries and local representatives.
"I arrived in beautiful sunshine ... I got a really good sense of a lively city, with lots of wonderful old buildings.
"I’m based in Wellington, but it’s really important to discover different parts of the country, and work out ways the UK can work with the regions."
Scottish poet Robbie Burns’ work was about connecting people, and she saw parallels with her own work.
"What he did with art and culture, we do as diplomats."
A career diplomat, she was posted to Islamabad, Pakistan, as the political counsellor to the British High Commission from 2019 to 2022.
"It’s a really big relationship. There are 1.5 million British of Pakistan heritage who live in the UK, so there are lots of opportunities to make connections, but it’s also a very complicated and volatile region.
"It’s on the border of Afghanistan. I was there when Kabul fell to the Taliban, so the position really taught me about the importance of finding areas of common ground where you don’t necessarily agree with everything at the start.
"The stakes were really high."
Being curious was the key role of a diplomat, she said.
"You have to want to know about the country you’re posted in; you have to want to find out about what makes it different."
Tackling climate change, and educating people about the challenges associated with it, was another part of the British High Commission office’s ambit.
"In Dunedin, we worked with your museum on an exhibition about the impacts of climate change in the Pacific.
"There was a cultural connection there too. We’re keen to find out whether there are other projects in that area we can work on.
"But I have the opportunity to meet really fascinating people at the top of their field, whether it’s sport, art, science and politics."
New Zealand and Britain had a very special history that was intertwined from the very start, she said.
"The way we think about the world, the sense of fairness and the importance of abiding by international laws ... there is a lot of common ground."
