Kleo the Kererū meets Cohen the Kiwi

The Story

If you’re here from the book then you may already be familiar with some of this from the Authors Note: It’s a True Story (Sort of)! but do read on for a bit more context.

A summary from Cohen:
At the end of 2021, I was encouraged by a friend to travel overseas and see the world while living in Türkiye. Once might consider it a gap year or a needing to find myself.

Some plans changed and I ended up in the position of not going or going alone. Having already bought the ticket and made all the plans to leave the country I figured ‘why not?’ (More colourful terms were used).
Kleo came along shortly before leaving the country in January 2022. And as the story says I did find her at the Zoo, Wellington Zoo to be specific.

The passing of my grandfather delayed the trip a little so that I could spend time with family. Then on the 20th February, my mum drove us to the airport and the 36 hour journey to Istanbul began. 9 months of incredible adventure through Eastern Europe followed until we ran out of funds and settled in Australia for a while.
We’re still adventuring or trying, and since the end of that first trip we’ve visited spots in Australia, New Zealand, a return to Europe, and on to Canada.

So where does the book come in?
We’re glad you asked. During the summer (northern hemisphere) of 2022 we spent a couple months teaching english at a summer camp in Romania.

It was an absolute blast, we made lots of frineds among the other trainers, and Kleo became a fan favourite of the kids. And it’s while we were here that the idea of a book began to grow.
In conversations with the other trainers we talked about what next, questions about us needing to do something else with the idea of Kleo travelling the world. It didn’t go too far then and mostly just sat as an idea. Until…

We found ourselves sitting at a cafe in Novi Sad, Serbia. The writing flowed and draft one of Kleo the Kererū meets Cohen the Kiwi was formed.
Following that we passed it on to some family and friends to have a read, and then on to an editor. Not much has really changed since that original draft, it felt right and complete from the beginning.
The art started to follow a few months later when we got connected with our artists through someone else we met at a hostel in Ioaninna, Greece.
The rest, as they say, is history.

Okay but the story?
A bit vauge but I’ll try answer your question.
I guess the story has come about from a desire to share our travels through a unique point of view. We also want to share these cool places we went to cause maybe there isn’t so many stories written about some of these places. But I think the big reason, which has taken time to realise, is to inspire everyone to seek adventures, to travel, to live a little magic.

Sure, Kleo might be a toy but doesn’t mean she’s not real. Maybe I’m crazy saying it but I’ve certainly had a lot of conversations with her while travelling or even just being at home. It felt right that the story shouldn’t be grounded entirely in my reality, and Kleo being able to fly is honestly a small wish I do have, so why not bring it to life in a book. Plus its a lot easier to write a story when your main character has the ability to move themselves.

Hope you liked the story and the background to it. Feel free to leave a comment below and we look forward to seeing you for the next story.

Find your adventure,
Cohen the Kiwi
Kleo the Kererū

Where to buy?

The Gallery

We’ve had a lot of adventures since we joined forces. Below is a small selection of photos from our adventures round the Eastern Europe in 2022. Coming soon to the website will be a gallery with a great many more images to look through.

We didn’t really get many photos of us meeting but there is a couple out there we need to find. When we do we’ll upload them here.