The woman dividing the town
Thursday, 7 May 2026
Virginia Fallon is a staff writer and columnist based in Wellington.
OPINION: For a good long while now the lady has been living next to the main road.
Tracking her through social media mentions she came here from the next town over where, folks say, she was staying in a bus shelter.
“How did she get all her of her stuff here?” someone wrote and nobody really knew.
But all of it’s here, and she sleeps stretched out in the weather amongst a great pile of blue tarps and black plastic bags; her bare bum often turned towards the traffic.
She sleeps a lot, the lady.
According to social media she either has a house or doesn’t, is perfectly pleasant or utterly awful to deal with, and graciously accepts, or rages against, offers of help.
When she first turned up there was the usual stuff in response. Folks posted their various concerns and tagged various councillors who, in turn, posted various platitudes.
They said things like they were working on it, or talking to other people, or contacting other agencies. They were busy, busy seeking a solution, and that was mollifying enough for a while.
Then when it wasn’t, folks started tagging the council-proper, cops, and each other. “She is making a hell of a mess” someone wrote to more than a few dozen thumbs up, “it’s a hell of a sight”.
“It’s not nice” someone else wrote, “for the children to see”. She was referring to the lady’s bum which is now just as common a sight as the Welcome to Waikanae sign.
The former, as an aside, is nothing more than what it is according to my own grandchildren. We drive past it and say “there’s the lady’s bum” then go on about our lives. It’s now just part of the scenery.
When the lady first arrived she was always on the grass across the road from the butcher’s shop. Then she started moving to the other side, sometimes outside the butcher’s window, other times the hairdresser’s.
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These days her time seems equally split between either side of the road. Her belongings are too – separate piles of black bags and blue tarps, ever-growing on either the grass or concrete.
The lady is causing a hell of a kerfuffle here, in this where community sentiment is as divided as her camps,
On one side we have the folks who try to help. Almost every day there are updates – “our friend’s still there” and “looks like she’s got some food” and “she’s sleeping again”.
Someone says they dropped off a blanket. Someone else has taken her coffee.
Dozens have reported buying her pizzas – proven by the amount of bright branded boxes spreading across either side of the road. God knows if this community could build her a house out of pizza boxes it would.
On the other side, of course, are the folks who just want her gone; their posts cataloguing her mess, flesh, and continued existence.
They ask what’s being done. And why nothing is being done? Because surely someone must be responsible for doing it?
They say they feel for her, which they really, genuinely do, but something has to happen because none of this is right. There must be somewhere for her? Somewhere kind, safe and not by our road.
And the posts go back and forth – offers and offence, kindness and irritation, pizzas and protestations – while the lady moves only from one side of the road to the other.
This weekend someone posted looking for a free tent.
“I’ll pitch it” he wrote, “because it’s getting cold at night and we are humans, aren’t we?”