Heartland - Aitutaki

I love my life in New Zealand — there's education here for my children. I look at their future and I really want for them to have the best.

– Iva Singsam on why she is raising her kids in New Zealand, early in this episode

I get the impression that they think that everything is easy here [in New Zealand]. They think because we earn 10 times what they earn, that we don't have to spend as much. They don't realise that it's as much of a struggle here as it is for them back home.

– Kiwi Robbie Harris, the partner of Cook Islander Ngara Harris

It takes half a dozen flights and most of the day before all the expatriates are back in the bosom of the village, and they can start to absorb the changes that have occured while they've been gone.

– Presenter Annie Whittle on the group arriving back in the village of Vaipae

For the first time you go there it's a shock. They get up too early in the morning, and in the cold. You want to sleep in, but you have to get up. Everyone has to get up and get ready to go to work . . . you have to do the homework. And that's when you start to think, 'I wish I'm back home'.

– Rangituruturu Pitomake describes what it's like for Cook Islanders when they first move to NZ

I don't think people realise how lucky they are here. I never thought we are lucky while I was living here in the first place. I thought New Zealand's always the attraction for most of the Cook Islanders that had gone there. But I think now — for the first time in my life — with my new family, it's time to bring them over here. It's time to come home.

– Ru Newhome on wanting to return home to live in the Cook Islands

A part of me wanted to stay, a part of me wanted to come back because we got a home on the other town. It's a beautiful home, and then I think of my family there [New Zealand]. If I come here, all my family is over there. It's so hard to think of leaving your family...

– Maria Takata’inga on being torn between staying in the Cook Islands and returning to New Zealand

For me I think back home in Aitutaki is my home . . .. . New Zealand is my second home, because back home in Aitutaki that's where I come from. That's my soil, that's my blood, and that's my iwi. It's about time me and my brothers and my sister had to think about it — go back and build our house, and take our family back home where we belong.

– Mi'i Daniels

They've been coming here for 30 years or more: from a hundred islands across the face of Polynesia. For them the heartland is two places: one here in New Zealand, and another on the home island. For most, the ties to home are strong. Money flows back, relations come out to visit, the old return to die.

– Annie Whittle introduces this episode of Heartland