AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Mark Meredith and I’ll do anything I can to save the Asa Wright Nature Centre.

If I come from anywhere in Trinidad, it's Cascade, where I lived for the happiest ten years of my entire life.

My Trini wife, Roslyn, and I had married in St Ann’s Church, but spent the next ten years living in Langstone, a seaside village in England. The Royal Oak, a 16th-century pub with water lapping against its walls was 50 yards from our front door. It was the perfect place. But Roslyn hankered after home and I could live with leaving the cold behind. We packed up our two young daughters for the adventure of my lifetime.

We rented a house in Cascade, land sloping down the hill, tall, exotic fruit trees, more colourful birds than I'd ever seen and the largest bachac nest anyone we knew had ever seen. The mosquito swarms that shared our home devoured my sweet English blood, to remind me where I was living.

We emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, in 2006, after two serious home invasions in the Knightsbridge house we bought.

One Saturday afternoon in 2003, men broke the back door into pieces and pointed a gun at my children. Just so they could rip the DVD player from the wall.

My third daughter, just three, sat staring in shock at the TV she'd been watching lying smashed on the floor. I arrived to flashing blue lights outside my house.

In 2005, three men burst into our home. I was lifted up against the wall by my throat and my own carving knife put to my neck. Thank God the girls weren't home.

The bandits ransacked the house and shattered the dream.

In New Zealand, we could leave our children at home, safely. We didn’t live on the edge of panic at every unexplained noise outside.

My two younger daughters are afraid of Trinidad. They have no desire to return.

I was bitter for a long time that crime had driven us out of the place we loved, where we'd been so happy.

But New Zealand’s health system saved my life in 2011 when I had a stroke. And Roslyn’s when she had breast cancer.

So, thanks, bandits.

Curry was the first thing I taught myself to cook, back in the 80s. I’ve been cooking all sorts of cuisines for my family every day ever since.

I fell in love instantly with New Zealand’s safety, incredible beauty, laid-back nature, parks, conservation ethos, (the legislative) protection of its wondrous natural assets.

I’d spent my entire time as a journalist in Trinidad fighting (for the mindful) development of the environment.

Much to my surprise, I still am, from the other side of the world.

I was born in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where my father had been sent to manage the small Salisbury (now Harare) operation of the UK multinational company he (worked for) all his life.

When we moved to England, my father’s office was next door to West Bromwich Albion Football Club. He l