Chapter 35In the middle of a windswept plain near the northern tip of the South Island, a refugee camp had been erected, surrounded by strong metal fencing topped with barbed wire. Inside the compound, rows of hurriedly erected masonite huts squatted on bare earth, their corrugated iron roofs gleaming in hot midday sunlight. The occupants were nowhere to be seen, except for one middle-aged man striding across a patch of gravel to a small hut set apart from the others.
The camp had been home to Sky People ever since their release from the quarantine station weeks earlier. Immigration officials had yet to determine a suitable place for their permanent settlement, the media having atypically whipped up anti-refugee sentiment in a relentless campaign, which had been beamed into every Aotearoa
