From England, France, Italy and the US to the Bay of Plenty: Travellers talk about their OEs

Charlotte Tibble grew up in England and has been living in working in New Zealand for two years.

Four international travellers chose Aotearoa to work and live for one year. The Bay of Plenty Times talks to three European graduates and a surfboard shaper from California. Aleyna Martinez reports on what they loved about the region.

Charlotte Tibble, Surrey England, 22

By the time Charlotte Tibble finished her maths degree, the world had changed.

She had lived in Denmark before and after graduating she planned to move from Britain to explore Europe. But Brexit eliminated that option in 2020.

Tibble remembered a trip to New Zealand with her parents and decided to take up a three-year working holiday visa.

Arriving in Auckland, she opted to see the country by bus and booked a five-week InterCity trip. When she arrived in Queenstown, ”that’s where I ran out of money”, she said.

She then got work in hospitality.

“This was in autumn and most places were hiring, so it was quite easy.”

That was her first year.

For her second year, she flew to the Mount with her younger brother after a trip home to England.

Tibble works at Latitude 37 in the Mount and “loves” the lifestyle here. There was no pressure to stay, “we knew we could leave if we didn’t like it but then we got here, and I mean you’ve got the Mount and the beach”.

“About 10 minutes ago, I just applied for my third year,” she said.

“Compared to Queenstown, I didn’t realise how close everything is in the North Island.

“Here you can go to Coromandel, Hamilton, Gisborne, you can go everywhere if you want to, so that’s amazing how close it is.

“And the beach is gorgeous. I don’t live near beaches at home and the ones we’ve got are stony, which are cute to me, but not after I’ve seen this.”

Luke Melby, 26, American surfboard shaper and bartender

Luke Melby from San Clemente, California. Photo / Aleyna Martinez

Luke Melby was raised in surfing town San Clemente in California and moved to Pāpāmoa to make surfboards in December 2023.

His goal upon arrival was to “surf the world”.

“If you’re a surfer, you know New Zealand’s got amazing waves and uncrowded waves. I knew New Zealand was like a surf Mecca.”

He found a home in Mount Maunganui and moved from the surfboard industry to working in hospitality.

“You can pay a whole family on tips in America, here not so much,” he said.

Melby said he got a job as a bartender at Master Kong bar and restaurant which gave him a cultural experience.

“Most of the people I worked with were Nepalese. Hospitality in New Zealand is a great place to meet people from different ethnicities and cultures.

“It’s hard for travellers to get other kinds of jobs outside of hospitality.

“I’d never met anyone from Nepal before.”

He said living, working and surfing in New Zealand had been a dream and Aotearoa to him felt “genuinely more laid back” than California.

“Everything’s done pretty slowly in New Zealand.

“It’s so removed from the rest of the Western world, yet it’s a Western world,” Melby said.

Océane Legatelois, climate change policy graduate from France

Océane Legatelois is a French traveller who had been living in Spain before moving to the Bay of Plenty on a one-year working visa. Photo / Edoardo Zelli

Océane Legatelois was a project manager with an apartment and a car in Spain when she decided to reduce her belongings to a suitcase and come to New Zealand.

With a master’s in political science and a passion for the environment, she said Wwoofing – living and working on organic farms – suited her because it is a network that is conscious about climate change.

“It’s really linked to the Wwoofing lifestyle,” she said.

She recommended the experience. For Legatelois, it served as a great way to explore the world and was better than being a tourist which she said could get “boring”.

Working at fruit orchards and assisting with operations interested her. “Just to reconnect with agriculture. The basis of our life is eating, so being able to see how that works is important.”

The Sudarshanaloka Buddhist retreat centre near Thames was a highlight, she said. “They were offering 10 days of work and it was a mix between Wwoofing, but having time to meditate in the middle of nature.

“What is great about New Zealand is that you meet a lot of international people and also from some countries that maybe in Europe, you don’t meet that much because we are not that close to the Asian culture.”

Edoardo Zelli, 30, PhD student and keen photographer

Edoardo Zelli fell in love with photography and diving while growing up in Rome.

Edoardo Zelli lives in Mount Maunganui and is doing his PhD at the University of Waikato.

After one year, he says leaving the Mount will be difficult. “I feel free here,” he said.

“In Italy, there is no way you can go anywhere barefoot.”

That freedom was dear to him, he said.

New Zealand being a global hot spot for deep-sea corals was another highlight.

“The more complex the environment is, the more chances you have for corals to grow on it,” Zelli said.

Rome-born Zelli became interested in photography when he was 18. For him, his relationship with the sea “has been a life-changing experience” that he always planned to capture in images.

“I was interested in biology and the mechanisms of life, the cell work and the ecosystem – it’s so complex, so perfect and it’s endless.

“Corals are a universe. They are biologically complex, and they have a universe of life inside them.

“Molecular biology is one universe,” he said.

One thing he would miss is diving around Leisure Island.

Walking through the sea dunes toward the sea, he would remember how walking through them felt like a “decompression chamber of life’s stress”.

He said he had grown as an individual here.

“This is the furthest place from Italy I could go and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved here.

“A piece of me will be left here when I leave,” he said.

Aleyna Martinez is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty. She moved to the region in 2024 and has previously reported in Wairarapa and at Pacific Media Network.