Providing Marlborough with digital news, opinion, & local content.

Aaron Goodwin | Director

Often, simple quotes are the most relatable. I've always liked the Forrest Gump classic:

"Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get."

My own path has been anything but clear cut, and drawing on such an unpredictable mix of experiences across New Zealand gave me a comprehensive understanding of the many realities everyday people navigate. Moving into social commentary was a natural next step, especially for someone who has never been shy about speaking their mind.

I wanted to bring a practical, grounded voice to conversations that too often miss what life actually looks like on the ground.

Born into a working-class Blenheim family in 1992, my life has been a series of stark contrasts. As a young school leaver in Marlborough, I drifted between welfare, commercial cleaning, and vineyard labouring - where I witnessed migrant exploitation and bad actors in viticulture contracting. As a teenager, I lived for a time in Porirua's Cannons Creek, where I experienced gang neighbourhoods and the type of true urban decay that was jarring for someone with a small-town Blenheim childhood.

Through my teens and twenties, I lived raw and close to the bone - experiencing inner-city hardship firsthand in Auckland, relying on community support, and seeing the sharpest edges of city nightlife. In the communities of South Otago such as Milton, Outram, and Brighton, I saw the pressures of rural New Zealand up close: volatile dairy payouts, homesick Filipino farmhands, and crushing compliance costs faced by farm managers. The Outram diary farmer and the Queen Street barista, to my mind, want the same thing at the end of the day - job security, fair pay for their work, and a chance at a decent future.

The divide between rural and urban New Zealand always struck me as unnecessary friendly fire.

Dunedin, where I spent the most time other than my hometown of Blenheim, sparked my interest in the preservation of heritage architecture. Christchurch was my next stop, and the location I experienced the danger of the strain on the health system and importance of patient self-advocacy. Being stuck on the Cardiology Ward at a young age with late-diagnosed, high-troponin viral myocarditis was a sharp reality check. Having to fight to be tested and taken seriously within a stretched health system brought my experience right into line with what I’d heard from so many others trying to get proper care.

From 2021 to 2025, I worked security across Christchurch and Blenheim - guarding against retail crime, assisting during Covid mandate enforcement, and manning government sites such as the District Court and Base Woodbourne. Talking to business owners victimised by retail crime, and learning of the wider ramifications such as insurance premium hikes forcing them to consider closure (and the end of some of our contracts!) prompted me to incorporate and begin the process of starting my own security company. Right as things were moving forward though, I realised I'd done my time up close in the thick of things.

I wanted to start telling other people's stories instead.

My first experiences with media began as a Young Labour rep in my late teens. The contrast in how I was treated back then compared to when my views shifted gave me a quick lesson in media bias. It was night and day. More recently, I became the family spokesperson after the homicide of my cousin, Jess Boyce, and earlier after a highly publicised road crash she had survived. Those ordeals showed me the reality of media: selective quoting, late-night harassment, institutional bias - but it also the genuine humanity some journalists still bring to the profession.

Some of my life experiences have been uncommon, while many reflect the universal highs and lows we all share - celebrations and commemorations, successes and failures, dreams and regrets. Today, I'm happy to be home in Marlborough where, through the various projects being undertaken, I'm looking forward to slowing down my own story so I can help capture and share yours.