Since October 5 last year, the Henwood family — parents Tania and Jason and siblings Briar (12) and Nikita (10) have been walking along the Te Araroa track — to reconnect as family and honour the memory of Tania’s mum Wendy Fraser who was a keen walker.
Mrs Fraser died in 2019 after a harrowing 17 hours in Dunedin Hospital following a pulmonary embolism.
A series of missteps, misapprehensions and misunderstandings meant that Dunedin Hospital clinicians opted to wait and see whether her condition might improve, rather than immediately start the thrombolysis treatment that might have saved her.
After six months, billions of steps, challenges and a lot of generosity from people across the trail, the family completed their goal on Thursday at Stirling Point in Bluff.
"My mum died in Dunedin Hospital ... and it was quite traumatic and affected our family quite a lot.
Mrs Henwood felt a mix of emotions when completing the journey which was called "Hīkoi for healing".
"I was wondering if I was going to cry — I didn’t but seeing dad, I cried."
"It was really mixed. Because sometimes I felt like the most irresponsible parent in the world because, you know, we’re making our kids do things that sometimes they really didn’t want to do and sometimes it was a bit scary so there was a wide range of emotions."
During the journey, the children enrolled with the Correspondence School and Mr Henwood said he could not have been more proud of them.
He admitted there were up and downs and many things they had to learn from.
The mental part was harder than the physical — but in the end, everything brought them closer.
"It’s been a pretty epic journey. Both kids have actually grown so much through the journey in spending some time with the family has been just really pretty awesome.
"We’ve grown together as a family."
The children loved the experience and the adventures but Nikita confessed she would not be walking long distances for a good period of time.
Mrs Henwood was very emotional when thinking about what her mum would think of their accomplishment.
"I think she would be really proud that we did it as a family and that we stick together as a family."
