Four adventurous women discuss their lives with Miriama Kamo in the opener to the 2020 WORD Christchurch writers' festival

Listen to Miriam Lancewood, Annabel Langbein, Kaiora Tipene, and Selina Tusitala Marsh talking to Miriama Kamo

Highlights of the panel discussion

Four women tell stories from their adventurous lives in this event which launched the 2020 Word Christchurch Spring Festival in October: Kaiora Tipene, one half of the Netflix duo The Casketeers; Selina Tusitala Marsh, former Poet Laureate and author of Mophead; Annabel Langbein, celebrity cookbook author and adventurer; and Miriam Lancewood, author of Woman in the Wilderness, hosted by broadcaster Miriama Kamo

Miriam Lancewood and her husband have for much of their life together been nomadic. Literally. Living in the bush, eating what they can kill, with no place to call home.

"We feel we live a very free life," she says. "But we don't have security. We don't have a regular income. We don't have a group of friends and family that we see regularly. We cannot accumulate posessions. And so it's quite a different life - a life of adventure. None of us want to live a mediocre life. Right? None of us want to die of boredom and live Groundhog Day, do we? None of us want to be called sheeple.

So what stops us from having an adventure? Age. When you're over 50 you think, 'I should settle down, and find some security.' Now Peter, my husband, is 30 years older than I am. And he started long walking the Te Araroa Trail when he was 62 years old. So it's all in your mind.

You have to have the courage and the mentality to live the adventure."

In her '20s, Annabel Langbein was living in the bush with her boyfriend, hunting, shooting and fishing, and loving the freedom. She recalls driving him home one afternoon after a session at the gun club where he had been drinking heavily, "and he grabbed the steering wheel and we stopped. And he got out of the car, and he threw up and his teeth came out! Like, I didn't even know anyone with false teeth at that stage of life. And I tell you what - he did not look quite so good without those pearly whites. But, as they say, love is blind."

During her time together with Luke, she lived in the bush and used to make crayfish pots. However, for me it was quite a lonely life because she's naturally quite a sociable, gregarious sort of person. "I didn't know anyone else,: she reflects. "I'd shacked up with this guy. I stayed with him for two and a half years."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details