1 NEWS Tonight presenter Jenny Suo coming out a four-day West Coast tramp to find New Zealand in lockdown was like something out of the 2010 film Tomorrow, When the War Began.
Sam Weston, who Suo was scheduled to interview while on the trip to the South Island, picked her up from the Great Walk near Punakaiki on Wednesday just after she’d found out the country was at Alert Level 4.
“She basically found out the last 200m of the track, you get reception,” Weston said.
Weston had sent Suo a couple of text messages saying the interview was off and he would give her a lift to Hokitika Airport.
“She got the second [text] first and it didn’t really make sense and she’s probably going what the hell,” he said.
“She was in shock, she was definitely in shock eh. You can imagine it, you’ve just done four days.
“We did give her the option of staying at our house for the night and dropping her off in the morning, but I sort of thought she’d want to get back up as soon as possible.”
Weston said there were plenty of people on the West Coast who spend a lot of time in the bush and would have had a similar experience to Suo.
“That’s almost like a subcategory in itself [people that go bush and would have no idea about lockdown], especially down here man, there are so many that spend as much time as they can in the bush,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be surprising of people had gone for a two-week stint or something like that and they’ve just come out and kind of like that book or movie, Tomorrow, When the War Began, that’s the first thing that popped into my mind when I picked her up.
“It’s about kids that go camping in Australia and then the town gets overrun by army and then they come out and realise what’s going on sort of thing. It’s quite bizarre, I don’t think it would have sunk in for her until she got back to Auckland what was really going on.”
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