There was nothing subtle about my plan to persuade Nikki Kaye to do an anniversary interview after she spectacularly quit politics at the 2020 election.
It would appeal to her affection for the remote sanctuary of Great Barrier Island, a special part of her former Auckland Central electorate.
The idea was to let her be my guide for the weekend and, along the way, see what she's been up to, what the future holds for her and whether she has any plans to return to politics.
The only thing I had heard about her in the past year was that she had spent some time detoxing from politics at John Key's holiday house on Maui.
She agreed to the plan, and that is how I came to be climbing into Nikki Kaye's 1994 Rav4 last week after a half-hour flight from Auckland to Barrier in a plane with 12 passengers.
The vehicle is Tory blue, but coincidentally. It was bought only a few weeks ago because she is spending so much time on the island these days.
There is no way she was going buy one of those SUVs and look like tosser on Barrier, she says.
It didn't seem the right time to debate whether the RAV4 was in fact an SUV, albeit a compact one. She needs to concentrate on those blind bends and narrow roads as we head over the hill to Tryphena.
We have barely gone five kilometres when she wants to know if the island is what I expected and what I plan to write.
She has always been fun but was what you might call a relentless politician. Maybe that hasn't changed.
We have known each other throughout her political career which began at age 28 and ended age 40. I have covered the big events including her elevation to cabinet in 2013, her treatment for breast cancer in 2016, her promotion to Education Minister in 2017, and her final chapter as National Party deputy leader for 53 days in 2020.
We are heading to the Currach for dinner. A currach is a round Irish boat; The Currach is the Irish pub at Tryphena and Orla, the landlady, has the perfect disposition for her job in my careful two-minute judgment.
It's a blend of efficiency and systems that a busy pub needs, overlaid by a sense of welcome for locals and strangers alike.
It has indoors and outdoors, big tables and long tables on the outside deck.
Nikki takes three goes to find the right spot. I tell her I'll put that in the piece, in case there is any doubt that I need her permission. Eventually she settles on a long table at the side of the deck where she has a view of the rest of the customers.
We had agreed that neither of us wanted to rake over the events leading up to her quitting – she and Amy Adams had led the coup to replace Simon Bridges with Todd Muller, which ended badly when Muller suffered a mental breakdown and lasted only 53 days.
Besides, she is now a private citizen who has laid very low for 18 months and I'm curious about the new life, not the old one.
The tape-recorder, camera and notebook are not out tonight. After dropping our gear at Tipi and Bob's motel, we head along the road to the Currach for pizza and drinks and she starts relaxing.
She is still a fitness fanatic, running and walking and now swimming a lot with her young niece. Before long the conversation moves to politics and the dire polling before the coup, which had apparently reached the depths to which David Cunliffe took Labour in Opposition.
Then she suddenly looks startled.
"God, it's David Cunliffe."
In this remote part of the Gulf, David Cunliffe, partner Anna Kominik, and a large party of teenagers have arrived at the table directly behind me.
Cunliffe comes over and it's like a school reunion catching up on why we are there and who has been doing what. He initially joined a consultancy but has set up his own.
Do you miss politics, Nikki asks him.
"I occasionally miss the smell of gun powder in the nostrils," he says, only half joking.
He asks if she knows any good fishing spots and she recommends Shark Alley, at the end of Medlands beach. The Rav may be small but a fishing rod between the two front seats stretches into the back.
They make sure they have each other's contact details and then get back to their respective meals. For all the grief he got and gave in politics, he is actually a nice guy.
The place is starting to fill up and a couple sit down next to us at the long narrow table.
Nikki talks about some of what she has been doing in the past year in Hawaii, San Francisco, London, Auckland and Great Barrier.
Yes, she did have a holiday at the Keys' place in Maui although they weren't there.
She has joined the board of AUT Ventures, the commercial arm of the Auckland University of Technology and she is excited about the start-ups it could nurture.
She did some work for the OECD and the Government of Bahrain, presenting to a virtual conference around 21st century education systems.
She visited technology companies in California and friends in Britain before getting a ballot spot to return to MIQ. All up she spent five months overseas.
She has also decided that she wants to make a contribution in the field of digital education in New Zealand and the United States and has got herself a three-year visa to do so.
She is now officially what's known as "an extraordinary alien". That means she can split her time living and working between New Zealand and the United States working in her specialist area.
She is also committed to doing what she can to help breast cancer charities.
Nikki's voice suddenly changes and lowers to a whisper.
"God, is that Lorde?"
I turn around to see a couple of women under a jacaranda tree over my right shoulder.
"Is she the one in the black or the one in the white?" I ask.
Neither apparently. It's the person right next to me wearing a cap and next thing Nikki is stretching out her arm to introduce herself.
"Hi Lorde. I'm Nikki Kaye. We've met before in Sydney… And this is Audrey from the Herald."
Lorde looks slightly mortified at this little declaration. She takes a moment to perhaps decide whether she is about to face unwelcome questions about her time in MIQ and what she was planning to sing at the Prime Minister's wedding.
"We're off the record," I say, knowing immediately my editor will never forgive me.
Nikki recounts their meeting in Sydney when she got into a lift they were sharing and introduced herself as the Minister of Youth in New Zealand, and then realised Taylor Swift was the other person in the lift with them. Lorde remembers it well.
And I tell Lorde that my elderly mother has a large picture of her on her wall posing with three grandchildren outside Dizengoff's on Ponsonby Rd. Lorde doesn't remember but she has good manners.
Babbling over, we return to our respective meals and conversations and Lorde and her boyfriend, Justin Warren, (I Google it later) decide to stay put.
Nikki has an informal tour planned over the next two days that includes some sweeping white-sand beaches, a drive through Aotea Conservation Park up to Port Fitzroy, My Fat Puku cafe, the art gallery, and Mulberry Grove, a few bays from Tryphena where she has recently bought 1.2ha of beautiful hillside bush.
She spent part of last year renovating her house in Ponsonby and selling it to fund the new life.
Nikki 's first encounter with Great Barrier Island was when she was aged 17 and thrived in a Survivor-style reality tv show. She was left on Arid Island (Rakitu) with five other teenagers and very little food.
The special connection was strengthened over the 12 years she was its MP.
"The Barrier is heaven on Earth," she says. "I love the community here. I love the landscape. It is place I feel very connected to."
Some of that connection could be explained but some could not.
"I've always kind of known, that I'll end up here for a period of my life."
She is planning to build a small house in the bush at Barrier, or more specifically, get pre-built connecting pods put onto poles on the site. The plan is for it to become her base in New Zealand and for Barrier to be home.
She wants to have made progress by Easter although isn't operating at the same frenetic pace she did as a Cabinet minister and MP.
"I have been catching up on 13 years of life admin, reconnecting with family and friends and rearranging my life for a better work-life balance."
The tiki tour of Great Barrier Island, also known as Aotea, is accompanied by James Blunt and Norah Jones CDs, bought by my guide for $1 each at the local op shop.
We pass the rubbish dump, aka "Donald Trump" according to a replica AA sign.
She points out Awana beach where her old mate David Farrar nearly drowned and was rescued by a local who saw him in trouble. She calls him over the weekend and they continue what has become a running debate about whether she would have tried to save him if the local hadn't.
It's a lovely drive past the vast beaches through the bush hills of the Aotea Conservation Park towards the safe anchorage at the end of the island, Port Fitzroy.
Even the graffiti is tasteful: one rock says "Bob", another says "stoned".
It's a surprisingly long island, about 45km, and is 90km from Auckland.
Nikki Kaye's first big brush with controversy was over Great Barrier Island. A year after being elected on a ticket of being a guardian of the Gulf, her own National Government raised the prospect of mining on DoC stewardship land on the island.
She spoke out publicly and within Government ranks, although did not join the public protest march down Queen St. The mining plan was shelved and she pushed for the Aotea Conservation Park as the local MP. It was approved by Nick Smith as minister.
There's a store at Port Fitzroy and enough time for an ice-cream stop and a rest for the Rav4 before the shorter journey back.
We drive past a handsome, bronzed young man walking in the same direction as us on the side of the road and Nikki pulls over to offer him a ride.
"I'd love one," he says.
He squeezes into the back. He has spent the night in DoC's Heale Hut and has taken a wrong turn along the way out and has been walking for five hours. We drop him up the road a few kilometres where he had left his rental scooter in the bush, saving him another few hours walk.
There's talk about meeting up that night.
We're back at the Currach and he turns out to be a Kiwi builder called Ollie who has spent a few years in Australia. He returned home voluntarily last year and is trying to decide where to make home.
He appears not to see it as his destiny to stay on and build Nikki's house and talks about checking out the Bay of Islands.
Nikki's immediate plans are to get stuck into the process of resource consents.
She has not completely cut herself off from politics but she doesn't want to get into debates about it.
"I feel very loved since I bowed out," she says.
"I still get people who message me and check in on me and I think people absolutely understand [why] I bowed out – they're just interested to check that I'm all good, that life is okay."
But she is definitely not returning to politics.
"My reflections about bowing out are that of course there will be elements of regret but overall I feel really proud of my time.
"I really felt in those couple of days when I made that decision, it was just very clear to me my time was over and it was the right thing for me and the right thing for the party.
"I feel very at peace and happy with what can lie ahead."
She likes to describe Barrier people as grounded, independent, resilient and resourceful.
She is clearly one of them.
