Three Kiwi Women and Their Outdoor Connection

By Ari Altun

New Zealand carries a strong image of outdoor life, vast trails, open water, mountain towns and a closeness to nature that becomes an identity. The lived experiences of three women who represent New Zealand, whether by birth or choice, reveal that relationship in different ways. Rebecca Speirs has rebuilt her life across countries, creating community wherever she lands. Arna Craig deepens her roots in Wanaka, where motherhood is closely tied to life outdoors. Josie Sinclair brings the long view, through decades of triathlon, travel and the desire to keep saying “yes” to the next adventure. Each woman confirms that the outdoors remains central to how they have grown, what they value, and how they continue to move through the world.

That connection started with Craig’s childhood tied to the coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

“My sister and I would stand on the wharf waiting for Dad to come back in on his fishing boat,” she recalls. “While we were waiting, we would just be jumping off the wharf into the water.”

She traces that bond directly to her father, “a real man of the sea,” and to a childhood she describes as connected to “the ocean or the mountains.” Sinclair remembers something similarly free near Taupo, where “all the kids would just run around feral all day and come back in the evening,” embracing what she calls “a very easy environment to grow up in.” Speirs was raised on the east coast of England, and later found that Kiwi connection to the same kind of outdoor life. “You’d go and build camps, climb trees, run around with your mates and ride your bikes,” she says. With “a field behind our house” and the freedom to roam, those early experiences remain strong over time. 

“I moved to New Zealand when I was 30,” she says. “I think it was always a dream.”

She was drawn by “the landscapes and the adventure possibilities” and spent years riding trails and long-distance bike paths across the country. Even after moving again, this time to Perth, Australia, she found herself doing what she had done before.

“I kind of just ended up recreating my life here,” she says. “I joined the surf life saving club because I live next door to one, joined the tri club, joined a swim squad and joined a cycling club.”

Craig’s story is less about deepening what is already there. In Wanaka, outdoor life is inseparable from family life.

“I work for myself, so I have a lot of flexibility while the kids are at school,” she says. “After school it’s just full noise. They’re into everything that mom and dad are.”

The days are filled with swimming, athletics and just being outside together. “We do lots of mountain biking here and that is probably where we spend most of our time as a family.”

She tells XTERRAplanet that confidence, gratitude, resilience and trust are built through shared time outdoors, and her children are already beginning to form that connection for themselves.

Sinclair’s version is measured across decades, rather than stages of settling or parenting.

“I started triathlon in 1988. I first raced XTERRA in 2003,” she says, and the years since have been filled with the kind of travel and challenge that only deepened her attachment to the sport and the places it led her. She speaks of Sardinia, central Europe, Australia and the beauty of racing in natural parks around the world, but also of the people who keep pulling her back.

“There’s still a lot of camaraderie,” she says. “If someone is struggling, people usually try to help a bit, and it often feels like a big family.” In her story, outdoor life is about staying open, continuing to explore and remaining ready when the next opportunity appears.

Speirs’ IT work first took her to Wellington, then to Papamoa Beach near Rotorua, where the everyday she wanted felt close at hand.

“[It] was just awesome because you could surf ski in the morning with the surf life saving club and then have a coffee and go to the trails and spend the rest of the day there. That was a dream Sunday. It doesn’t really get much better than that.” A remote job in Sydney followed, but after a restructure she made another move, this time to Perth. “I just made a call to come to Australia just for better job opportunities for a period of time, and chose Perth because it just sort of has everything. It’s got good jobs. It’s got a good lifestyle.” Now, she says, “I’ve ended up buying a place next to the beach, which there’s no way you can do in Sydney really.”

“You start seeing the same people and you start chatting,” she continues. “Something I did that made a difference, as well, is I started my own running group. We meet at the Orange Box Cafe at Leighton Beach at 6am on Wednesdays, run for 60-90 mins and then we have coffee afterwards.”

Craig, founder and communications director of Conscious, speaks from a life where work, family and the outdoors are tightly linked. “My husband Layton and I have been together for about 25 years. We met when I was 17,” she says.

Their children, Henley, 10, and Ida, 7, sit at the heart of their story. “Henley is an incredible little swimmer. He has really picked up the swimming bug and he’s more confident swimming in open water than I am.” Ida, she says, “was born with a heart condition and has already had four open heart surgeries in her life,” but “she is an absolute firecracker. She can outsprint me without a problem … when people talk about courage or belief, I feel like Ida is the one who has taught me those things.”

One of the first women in New Zealand to enter orthopedic surgery, Sinclair, who is now retired, built her career and her racing life side by side.

“Whenever I went on holiday it was always an active holiday,” she says. “I would go to a world championship or one of the national races in Europe, so it wasn’t really a rest holiday, but that suited me fine.” Last year, she spent three and a half months in Europe, racing XTERRA Nouvelle Aquitaine, XTERRA France and XTERRA Portugal. What kept pulling her forward was “the energy you get from the other people and from the race environment.”

Speirs makes a simple point that holds the weight of her world. “You’re capable of more than you think you are.” It is the kind of belief that has followed her across countries, across communities and into the life she has built for herself. Craig brings it back to the people around her.

“All of our friends hold the same values as us, so we’re really fortunate to have that kind of beautiful community around us,” she says. “It’s really cohesive. We’re really open and we welcome anybody in to enjoy the things that we all love.” And for Sinclair, the window of opportunity remains open. “If someone suggests something big, like the idea of riding the length of Patagonia which could be up to 4,000 km, I like to feel that I can still say, ‘I think I can do that.’”

Taken together, Speirs, Craig and Sinclair show what an outdoor identity looks like in real life. It’s built through movement, strengthened by community, and carried forward in different ways across various stages of life. Life outdoors continues to shape who they are, what they value, and how they move through the world.

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