Loyalist 'proud to be a Kiwi'

Kiwis don’t come much prouder or more loyal than Kylie Phaup-Stephens. She’s “a 36-year-old Kiwi girl” who, after seven years in London, is heading for home – the long way.

She jumped on her bike after the 2009 dawn service at London’s Hyde Park Corner and a service in Westminster Abbey, leaving behind her partner who had been in the NZ Army for eight years and was transferring to the British Army (Paras). She has made it to Australia via close to 30 countries – among them such tourist hot spots as Kosovo, Albania, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Tibet, Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

	Kylie Phaup-Stephens with the Kiwi lads in Afghanistan.

“It has been a tough journey, but also very rewarding,” she says. Especially the times when she was able to express her Kiwiness.

She camped in her tent for 10 days at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli, scoured the area, snorkelled amongst the many wrecks, and found “an incredible amount of ammunition and an Otago Rifles badge from one of our lad’s uniforms”. She donated the items to the museum in Cannakle.

“Gallipoli is a spiritual place, and special to me,” she says.

In Afghanistan she dropped in on the New Zealand Army in Bamiyan: “They’re doing a fantastic job and I have never been so proud to be a Kiwi. They are so well respected by the locals. I thought I would burst with pride! Kiwi Kiwi...thumbs up and toothy grins.”

A year after leaving London, she was in East Timor where she was “very humbled and very honoured to be made part of a truly special Anzac Day service”.

And, she says, she has educated countless people along her way as to what Anzac Day is all about, and where New Zealand is on a world map.

She’s now in Australia, and close to home. She expects to arrive in Auckland and ride to Christchurch. And she says she is definitely not going back to England.

“It is a great place, but the weather got to me in the end. Grey skies day after day just too depressing. I’m really looking forward to getting home and rediscovering all good things New Zealand.”

Gallipoli - 'a spiritual place, and special to me'.