Within a few months of Kane being born, Steph and I decided it was time to move away from Wellington. There were a lot of reasons behind the decision. Tim was there, the party scene was there, and my dependence on P had become something I knew I needed to get away from. Becoming a father hadn't magically fixed any of that, but it had given me a reason to think differently about where my life was heading. I had Kane to think about now, and I wanted to give our little family a chance at something better.

We decided on Rotorua. I had found a job managing a small car rental business there, and it was much closer to Steph's family in Tauranga. With Kane still a baby, we hoped being closer to her family would give us some support while we found our feet as new parents. We also made an agreement before we left Wellington. We would give Rotorua a proper go, and if things didn't work out there, our next move would be Australia.

One of the hardest parts of leaving Wellington was knowing I couldn't take Jake with me. Jake was my beloved English Bull Terrier crossed with a Staffy, and he was far more than a pet. He was my best friend. He had been beside me through some of the strangest and most difficult years of my life, including my time living in the bus beside the old morgue. Wherever I went, Jake was usually there. Because Zara and I shared custody of him, taking him several hours away wasn't really an option. I made the difficult decision to leave him in her care. I knew she loved him and would look after him, but leaving my best mate behind still hurt like hell.

We loaded our furniture and belongings into a truck and headed north. It felt good to be doing something different. I had a new job waiting for me, Steph and I had our baby boy, and for the first time in a long while I was putting some real distance between myself and the environment I had been caught up in. I didn't know whether Rotorua was going to work, but at least we were giving ourselves a chance.

We found a beautiful rental house that had only recently come onto the market. The property had lovely gardens that had obviously been cared for extremely well. One of the conditions of our tenancy was that we had to keep the gardens up to scratch, which I was more than happy to do. Whoever had lived there before us had clearly put a lot of effort into the place, and I intended to keep it looking that way.

As we moved our furniture inside, we could see impressions in the carpet showing exactly where the previous occupant's furniture had been sitting. It made sense to put ours in roughly the same places. The lounge suite went where theirs had been, and when we reached the master bedroom, we positioned our bed over the marks left by the previous bed. We didn't give it another thought. We unpacked our belongings, settled in and began getting used to life in Rotorua.

A couple of months later, I was sitting in the lounge one night watching television when I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. It came from the direction of the kitchen and looked like a dark shadow moving quickly across the floor. I turned my head to look, but there was nothing there.

It wasn't the first time it had happened. I had noticed little movements around the house before, but they had always been quick enough for me to question whether I had actually seen anything at all. I put it down to being tired, my eyes playing tricks on me, or my imagination. Having a newborn baby certainly wasn't helping with the tiredness either.

This time I decided to mention it to Steph. I wasn't expecting much of a response, but what she said caught me completely off guard. She had been seeing things too. She had noticed similar movements in different parts of the house but hadn't said anything because she thought she might be imagining them. Neither of us had mentioned it to the other before that night, which made the whole thing feel a little more strange.

The following day I was talking to our neighbour and somehow the conversation turned to the person who had lived in our house before us. He told me an elderly lady had lived there and that she absolutely loved the gardens. Suddenly I understood why keeping them maintained had been made such an important part of the tenancy.

I asked him where she had moved to. I assumed he was going to tell me she had gone into a retirement home or moved in with family. Instead, his expression changed and his head dropped.

She hadn't moved.

She had died in the house.

Then he told me where.

She had died in her bed, in the master bedroom.

My mind immediately went back to the day we moved in and those impressions in the carpet. We had placed our bed exactly where hers had been. Without having any idea what had happened in that house, Steph and I had been sleeping in the exact spot where the previous occupant had died.

The hairs on my body stood up. Until then, I had never really believed in ghosts or anything supernatural. I had always been more inclined to look for a logical explanation, and maybe there was one. But learning that an elderly woman had died in our bedroom after both Steph and I had independently noticed strange shadows moving around the house was enough to make me seriously question what we had been seeing.

When I got home, I told Steph what the neighbour had told me. That was it for me. I had no interest in hanging around to investigate whether the place was haunted or whether there was some perfectly reasonable explanation for everything. We had our newborn son living there with us, and I wasn't comfortable staying in the house anymore.

We found another rental and moved out. The new place was on a much colder side of Rotorua and was an older house, nowhere near as nice as the one we had left. I didn't care. From the day we moved in, there were no strange shadows, no unexplained movements and nothing else that made either of us uncomfortable. An older, colder house suddenly seemed like a pretty good deal.

I continued managing the rental car business for around a year. Rotorua had given us the opportunity to get away from Wellington and try a different life, but eventually I realised it wasn't where I wanted to stay. I wasn't enjoying the rental car business enough to see myself doing it long term, and Rotorua didn't feel like the place where I wanted to build our future.

That brought Steph and me back to the agreement we had made before leaving Wellington. If Rotorua didn't work out, we would move to Australia. What had once been our backup plan was now becoming very real.

Leaving New Zealand was a much bigger decision than moving between cities. Everything I had known was there. My family, my friends, my history and the places that had shaped me were all on that side of the Tasman. It was also where Jake was, and knowing I would now be leaving the country made saying goodbye to that part of my life even harder.

But I also knew I needed change. Staying somewhere because it was familiar hadn't always worked out particularly well for me. Sometimes the only way I knew how to find out what was ahead was to take the chance and go looking for it.

So after around a year in Rotorua, Steph and I made the decision.

We were selling up.

We were leaving New Zealand.

And we were moving to Australia.