Gemma Richardson was in her lounge in Auckland, New Zealand on March 23, 2020 when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the country into a strict lockdown. The 35-year-old expat from Flintshire had been waiting for the day the country would succumb to the looming threat of Covid, but no-one could have predicted the seemingly endless border restrictions that would ensue.
“It’s such a weird feeling,” she told WalesOnline from her home in the Kingsland area of the city which she says took the brunt of the country’s Covid cases. She is reacting to the news that two years after those ominous words from the prime minister she is finally allowed to leave the country and head home to see her family and friends in Wales again. “It feels completely surreal to be honest, but as though this is the right time to go - a long time coming.”
After she visited the country on a tour with the Welsh national rugby team in 2011 she said she “fell in love with what is essentially Wales on steroids”. She got a job she enjoyed with Auckland-based online marketplace Sleek, moved into a five-bed house which she has shared with friends ever since, and came back to Wales almost every year.
