'NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME MUSIC CONTINUES UPBEAT MUSIC Lake Rotorua is surrounded by farmland, native bush, steaming geothermal springs and Rotorua city ` my home. When you live here, you're always aware of its natural beauty and pungent smell. Mum's side of the family are from here, but the second she was old enough, she jumped on a bus and ended up down in Wellington, which is where we grew up. But this was always the place that we came back to for special occasions, for important family events and ultimately school holidays. Mum always said, though, that the second she could come back that she would, and the second I left high school, she did. So I guess it was just a matter of time before I ended up back here as well. I've been living here by the lake for a few years now, and these days it's a little bit more accepting and a little bit more diverse. Let's meet some of the colourful characters that make up my community. We'll celebrate Chinese New Year down by the lake. The dragon is very symbolic. It's a great Chinese mythical creature, and, as you can see, the dragon dance performers were of non-Chinese origin, and that` that's fantastic integration here in Rotorua. A dancer from Havana finds inspiration in the way cultures collide. It is amazing to watch two countries surrounded by water having so much in common but yet so far apart. We'll join a proud organiser of the local LGBT community dishing up a Kiwi classic. We don't get a lot of money to actually go out and have a really good time on, so this is really cool ` that we can actually give it back in this way to our committee. And a lakeside local tells us why two wheels take him places others can't reach. I've tried all sorts of roads. They just came up short. And this road that I'm on now is a narrow road, but it's a good road, and I know where that road is leading me. I'm Tamati Coffey, and this is my neighbourhood. 'NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME I just love the colour of this lake. It's so unusual because of the high sulphur content and other volcanic minerals. It's just beautiful. MAJESTIC MUSIC Nobody in my family had ever come out before as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, so when I decided to come out, things were pretty challenging all around. I had this idea that my mum would be the one that would step in and give me a big hug and say, 'It's OK,' and my dad would be the one that would step back and say, 'No son of mine...' All of that kind of stuff. But instead it was completely the reverse. It was my dad that took the step in and gave me a big hug and said, 'It's OK. You're my son,' and it was my mum that took a step back and said, 'What have I done wrong?' Not long after that, I remember writing my mum a letter. I said to her, 'This is who I am. I'm still your son.' She wrote me a letter back as well, saying, 'It's OK. I just need a little bit of time. I know you're still my son, and I still love you.' Well, she's had that time, and she's great with it now, but it just goes to show that having someone else's support can make all the difference, especially when you're young and the road ahead seems so long and winding. GENTLE PIANO MUSIC I came from a loving, um, home. Was a happy childhood, growing up,... MOTORCYCLE ENGINE REVS ...until a little bit later on in life, and then got into trouble with the law, and, uh, as we know ` that old saying ` 'The law won.' WARM MUSIC My name is, uh, Willie Rudolph. Based in, uh, a beautiful place called Te Weta Bay just out of, uh, Rotorua. The Christian Redeemed Motorcycle Club, it's where, uh, men and women come together, and they got one thing in common is the Lord Jesus, and another thing they've got in common is, uh, motorcycles. I got in trouble as a teenager. Looking back, it was just` I had no moral sorta deals. I had no standards. I think I ended up in court at an early age of, um,... 13, I think, uh, for assault at school. And, uh, afterwards it sort of just, uh, grew from, um, petty theft to, uh, more serious crimes. Um, it just led me into car conversion, uh, burglaries and then into the, uh, drug scene. And just ended up in, uh, various institutions, starting from, um, boys' homes up to your, um, adult prisons. It got that bad that I wanted to commit suicide. I'd lost the wife, the children ` everything. Ended up in prison, which is` 'I'm tired of this, um, lifestyle of mine. I just want out.' There was an inmate who was doing life, and, um, he just kept on pestering me with this, uh, Bible, and I just kept on saying, 'No, thanks very much. It's OK.' But, um, something strange really happened to me that night. Lord Jesus, you know, just came in, and he, uh, set me free, and, um, since then` 1986 was the change of my life. INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER BRIGHT PIANO MUSIC The Christian Redeemed Motorcycle Club, it varies from going to speak at various churches, uh, schools, talking about how we were and, uh, where we are today and just giving them a hope ` uh, there is another way out apart from, um, going down the road that I went down. I go down to the local dairy and roll up there, and kids from all ages, they'll go, 'Wow, Mister. What a nice-looking bike.' And so there's a talking point right there, and so I'll just share with them, um, how I came about getting this bike, what I'm about. And they'll see the, um, banner on my back there. 'Oh, you're a Christian, Mister.' 'Yes.' And then I'll just, uh, take it from there. Um, as you know, we've got the, um, 6th of this month, South Island Run. Mongrel Mob down in, um, Dunedin are going to be, um, hosting us for one night. Every year we do East Coast Ride, which is about 1000 K's in two days. And, uh, we get a` quite a few, um, random bikers coming in and guys who` They're not Christians. They don't know the Lord or anything, but, um, it's just a way for us to sorta connect. We're using our bikes, you know. I think I just wanted to ride with them, really, and there was no, um, reason other than that, but once I got into it, um, I started to realise what the kaupapa was ` what the purpose was ` and then I just, um, liked that. Um, people just come up to you at the gas station and next minute you're saving them at the gas station, you know, just out of the blue, and that kind of freaked me out a couple of times, but it made me realise that's what it's all about. Yeah, got down in the dumps a few years back, and I needed something to lift me up, make me feel better about myself. Going through hard times in life and, uh, dealing with things, so, uh... Stumbled across this, uh, '95 Super Glide in the, uh, car park where I was going to buy me a pie. Never got the pie. Got the bike, though. Yeah, yeah. (LAUGHS) Never got the pie. Still waiting for the pie. My bike's a 2015 Victory High-Ball. Uh, the makers are Polaris, an American company. I've always loved bikes, and I never could afford one, but, um, as I, uh, grew up, I could, um` Yeah, got an honest job, so I started, uh, saving up and, uh, started getting into riding bikes. You work hard and, uh, listen to your parents and, uh, your teachers, you can pretty much do anything. Coming from that background of just being a rebel, just being dysfunctional, from a background of just law-breaking to where I am now, where I embrace the Lord, it's amazing. And I can only bow my knees to the one and only person who has done that. I've tried all sorts of roads. They just came up short. And this road that I'm on now is, um` It's a narrow road, but it's a good road, and I know where that road is leading me. It's just brought me out of the darkness and into this great light. MOTORCYCLES RUMBLE TRANQUIL MUSIC In the last election, I ran as the Labour candidate for Rotorua, and when you go around the neighbourhood, knocking on people's doors, you get to know the make-up of a town pretty fast. I mean, there's a lot of low-income families around here that are just getting by, so it was a really humbling experience when I'd go and rock up to their front door. I'd say, 'Hi. I'm Tamati. I'm just wondering if you're gonna be voting this election.' And they'd look back at me, you know, and they'd be in the power seat ` I'd be in their space ` and they'd say to me, 'Maybe. What are you gonna do for me?' The population is getting more diverse here. There's a lot of international students coming through Waiariki Institute of Technology, and they help to shape the cultural fabric of the town, but I think I'd be lying if I said that we were a fully-integrated, multicultural city. I think there's still a lot of education to do on both sides, which is why I think it's fantastic that Rotorua hosts a Chinese New Year festival. It's a chance for older residents and newer migrants to get together and celebrate. LIGHT MUSIC My name is Christopher Low. So, I'm a third-generation Chinese, born in Malaysia. I decided with my wife to move to Rotorua to improve our lifestyle. I was working in the UK as a senior registrar, and when I became a consultant, we thought, uh, NZ would be a lovely place to bring up kids and to have a lovely lifestyle for us. When we came to Rotorua, it was just awesome. The peace, the beautiful scenery, the people ` you know, they were very friendly, welcoming, very accepting. The Rotorua Chinese Community of Commerce, it is a non-profitable organisation, run by Chinese professionals. We are hoping to promote more businesses in Rotorua to attract growth. How are you? Happy new year. Happy new year. BOTH SPEAK CHINESE How's business? Very good, yeah. It's like a vicious circle ` you need a growing population to attract business, but you need business to attract a growing population, because you need work created, migration, that sort of thing. So to try and break that circle, all the business leaders in town have to work together with the council. The council is extremely active, with the leadership provided by Mayor Steve Chadwick. How are you? Hi, Steve. How are you? It's very refreshing to have a mayor who's so prolific in trying to grow Rotorua. We have a local famous artist called Marc Spijkerbosch, and he has arranged beautiful, ancient Chinese artwork at the city council, free for anyone to view, and these artworks have been a testament of the relationships between our local council and Chinese dignitaries. Every time we host a Chinese dignitary, we get some Chinese gifts in the form of artwork, and they have collected hundreds of them. As a person of Chinese heritage, I feel really proud and honoured this artwork here is being displayed. The Chinese community, uh, will benefit greatly from` from this sort of profile, because it's just recognising the Chinese culture. helping people integrate better to sort of, uh, form a much more tolerant community. We're not events organiser, but we have been involved in a number of events like Chinese New Year celebration. BRIGHT AMBIENT MUSIC We provide, sort of, leadership and management support, uh, and sponsorship if they need it. MUSIC CONTINUES It's led by the council, um, who has delegated it to a few, uh, Chinese members to` to organise this, and most of the participants who've raised tents here are local businesses, so this supports local business, and, um, I'm most proud of the fact that they all come together to make it work. It's great we have such a united business community, that everybody wants to do something positive for Rotorua and its people. WARM PIANO MUSIC This dragon is very symbolic. It's a great Chinese mythical creature, but what's great about having it performed like that, it shows that you need a team of people working together in harmony. And, as you can see, most of the dragon dance performers were of non-Chinese origin, and that's fantastic integration here in Rotorua. Happy new year. This means it will give you good luck. So today is a lucky day for those who remain cheerful and optimistic. So are you cheerful and optimistic? Are you happy? Good. So it's a lucky day for you. Aw. Good girl. Your speech went really well. The most rewarding thing about me leading this Rotorua Chinese Community of Commerce is actually the friendship that I've struck up with lots of people within that organisation. And they're people with a lot of ideas and forward thinkers. They're people who love the community, like to build something bigger than themselves, and` and we all do it for the future of our generation. Most of us have children, and we want our children to enjoy that prosperity. SOFT, BRIGHT MUSIC Mokoia Island is the scene of Aotearoa's very own Romeo and Juliet love story, complete with a kick-ass leading wahine. You see, Hinemoa ` she swam out to the island in the veil of darkness, listening to the sound of Tutanekai's flute. Their two tribes were united in love, and their descendants, like me, live all around the lake today. Kia ora. (LAUGHS) This is my partner, Tim, who's from... ...Runcorn, which is about 25 minutes outside of Liverpool, in the north-west of England. That's right. Uh, but, despite that, they're not Scousers there. They are... We're Woolybacks. (LAUGHS) That's right. Tim was also lured here by music. He came to play for the NZ Brass Band Championships when he was asked to by one of the bands. He loved the place so much that he stayed. So that's our very own 'music across the water' love story. Sometimes magic happens when people from different cultural backgrounds find common ground. LATIN DANCE MUSIC MUSIC CONTINUES Dancing has a strong tradition in Cuba. It's part of our life. It's who we are. So since we're born, we always see our grandparents, our uncles, our neighbours celebrating that way. You dance and you sing when you're sad. You also dance and sing when you're happy. So it's hard to tell really what's happening with Cubans. My name is Greydis Montero Liranza, and I was born in Havana, Cuba. There was plenty of music and dance involved in my childhood, especially because all I wanted to do was dance. I was driving my mum crazy since I was little. She actually have to put me away to my bedroom when she had visitors, cos all I wanted to do was perform for them. Sometimes I ask myself, 'Is it in my blood?' I love to believe that I got the gracefulness of my mum and the originality and craziness of my dad, so that could be a good combo. When I came to NZ, I arrived with the Lady Salsa international dance-show hit. I was the principal dancer and choreographer of the show, and NZ was just the next destination. Little did I know that it was gonna become more than that. This is my dad. Oh, I miss him. So cute. And that's my mama. I learned to dance before I learned how to walk, to be quite honest, but professionally I started just when I finished my primary school. A friend of my mum suggested that the National School of Art was doing auditions for the kids, so she took me along. And after six months of auditions and hard training, I was able to enter. So at the age of 9 years old I was able to start my career, and that's where it all began. Oh wow. This is actually my first class when I went to dancing school. Unbelievable. They only chose nine girls from out of the whole country. This is very special photo. When I look back and I think, 'Why did I move here?' it seemed like a easy and simplest choice for me at the time. I wanted to work with children. I wanted to be able to provide a programme where I can teach ballet, contemporary, Latin, but not only that ` to provide, you know, different alternative style of dance for the children. At the same time, I wanted to learn a little bit more about the people of the land. I wanted to learn more about kapa haka and the culture, so it seemed like a perfect combination. ALL CHANT HAKA This is actually the Cuban Contemporary Maori Fusion at the NZ Cuban Festival 2015. It was here in Rotorua, and, God, that was amazing. That collaboration is one of the most rewarding things I think I've ever done. GENTLE MUSIC The most exciting thing about the collaboration is the learning process. You're learning about different culture, at the same time discovering things about ourselves as dancers, and how can` we can combine two cultures that it looks so different, but at the same time it has so much in common. (VOCALISES) I wanted to be part of it because it was something fresh and something new that we hadn't done before, and, you know, in all the kapa haka that we'd been doing ` my whanau and I ` you know, this is a first ` to be fusing it with the Cubans and all their dances and stuff. So it was` That, for me, was pretty cool. The weapons ` the things that they use ` the dancers do` they use for dancing as well. We have them too. The passion for their ancestors ` their goddesses. We also have different goddesses ` the goddess of the river, the sea, the sky. And the most important thing ` the love for the whanau; the love for the families; the love for la familia. It is amazing to watch two countries ` two islands ` surrounded by water having so much in common but yet so far apart. She's phenomenal. You know, what they do and the moves they pull off and the energy that they put into what they do, you can feed off it. And for us, as Maori, you know, we love feeding off energy. This sort of fusion helped to bring a lot of people who'd never met each other before come together, and we're sort of whanau now. For me, dancing, it's passion. It's a blessing, but it's something that needs to be shared. UPBEAT ELECTRONIC MUSIC Tim and I opened up this little bar, and at the start it was a bit of a conundrum, because people would say to us, 'How's the gay bar going?' and we'd say, 'Well, yeah, we're gay, and, sure, it's our bar, and we like gay bars, but it's not a gay bar.' I mean, you know, if you own a dairy and you're gay, does that make it a gay dairy? No. It just makes it a dairy. What we hope people realise is that whatever your culture or sexual orientation, you're welcome here. And that hasn't always been the case in Rotorua. I mean, in the '60s and '70s, gay men had to meet in secret rooms around the city to socialise. Thankfully things are changing, in part due to organisations like Bay Pride. First experience of Rotorua was actually going out in drag, and I went to Side Pocket, which is a bar just about five doors from my house. Side Pocket in those days was a very Black Power bar, and, um, walked in in drag, and there was a full-on fight ` three guys having a fight. So walked in and they says, 'What do you want, miss?' And I said, 'We're here to have a drink.' And from there on it was a little bit of banter, a little bit of cheekiness and whatever, but, um, I think it was an education and a eye-opener for them, because they'd never really seen anyone dressed in drag. My name's Graeme Cribb, and I volunteer for Hospice, uh, HIV support person, um, youth suicide and just supporting our gay community. Bay Pride is for LGBT community, and it's actually bringing us all together, especially in a smaller town, bringing the community to understand that we're not freaks, we're not weird; we are human, just like everybody else. We've had pageants. We've had float parades. We've had dance parties. You name it, we've had it. Miss Marmalade is actually my` my drag name. It was actually encouraging the ones who were out there who wanted to perform and actually giving them that stepping stone and saying, 'OK, if Miss Marmalade can get out there and do it...' I felt that actually gave them a lot more encouragement to actually do it and dress up and be who they are and express whatever entertainment they wanted to do. Rotorua people are more accepting of diversity because, I think, we actually have done events where it's softened it and it's shown them who we are and what we want to be and who we` what we can do. Today we're gonna actually share a meal at the tea house in Government Gardens. I've invited 12 of my dear friends and our committee to come along and share the meal. < Good afternoon. That's nice. Thank you for inviting us. Oh, you're most welcome. (LAUGHS) Nice to see you. BOTH SMOOCH LAUGHTER OK, we're making our shrimp cocktails for dinner tonight, so we're gonna put a little bit of iceberg lettuce on the bottom... My grandmother taught me, actually, how to make shrimp cocktails, and she used to have a catering business. In the school holidays I used to go and stay with her, so part of my pocket money was to go and help her in the catering business, and, um, we had a wedding, and we had to make 300 of them. So she said to me and my cousin, 'Here we go. Here's your job,' so we made these 300 cocktails. When we finished making them, um, we weren't even allowed to even try one or have one, so that was pretty sad, cos, um, they looked really nice, and unfortunately she never ever gave us one to try that night. But in future reference, I used to go home and make them myself and in my own restaurant. We don't get a lot of money to actually go out and have a really good time on, so this is really cool that we can actually give it back in this way to our committee. Everyone's given something to` for tonight, which is some shape of food or donated something ` time. So it's really nice to know that we can actually share a meal and all enjoy it. Welcome, everybody, to our dinner tonight. Um, thank you all for coming. It's really nice to have you here. Without you guys, Bay Pride would never have been where it was today, and, um, you're all so special to me. So, um, enjoy your meal. Bon appetit. (CHUCKLES) GLASSES CLINK, ALL CHEERS Rotorua feels like my home here. Been in Rotorua eight years and, um, made some cool friends here. Just a toast to Graeme ` cheers ` who has done so much to make this evening really good and has` has really been the` the mover and shaker for, what, nearly five years now in what makes our community such a great place to live. Cheers, Graeme. Thank you, Mark. ALL: Cheers. STIRRING PIANO MUSIC When I was living in Auckland, I got to a point where I really resented sitting in traffic. I used to sit there and think to myself, 'There's got to be a better quality of life somewhere.' I feel as though I've found that balance here, and just because I'm living by the lake, it doesn't make me any less passionate or motivated or enthusiastic about life ` in fact, more so. But this is still a provincial city, and I totally understand when there are young LGBT kids out there who say, 'OK, I'm` I'm 18, I'm 19. Uh, I've done my time here. I just wanna get out.' And to those kids, I always say, 'Go for it. Get out of here. Go and` Go and live it up. Live life. 'But make sure you come back, 'because when you do, you might realise that attitudes are always changing.' Captions by Catherine de Chalain Edited by Imogen Staines. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016