Rosemary has lived her life on the edge. Boarding a boat in Timaru, sending a bogus email to delegates of an Oil conference in Queenstown, or being glued to a road in Wellington, has seen her run headlong into the authority’s thin blue line.
The Restore Passenger Rail supporter’s rap sheet has the look of an experienced climate activist’s resume.
In 2019, Rosemary and 27 others “boarded an oil support vessel in Timaru harbour…On behalf of oil free otago alongside other groups - extinction rebellion and greenpeace. Four of us, including me, were convicted and discharged for wilful trespass in November 2020”.
She wrote a bogus email to oil industry delegates, media and conference speakers. It was a “satirical letter to speakers at the 2019 Petroleum Conference in Queenstown, pretending to be some of the big players in oil industry in NZ, postponing the conference due to the climate crisis.”
Police hunted her down, arresting her “about 9 m[o]nths later and had phone and laptop taken, charged with two counts forgery. Forced to take DNA and fingerprints.”
Come June 2023, a jury of her peers found her guilty.
“I felt it was obvious it was fake, but jury found me guilty. They were told by the prosecution not to take morality or the climate emergency into account when making their decision.”
“Conference went ahead. Nobody was fooled. Ruffled some feathers.”
On 29 August Rosemary was glued to a road as part of a Restore Passenger Rail action in Wellington. According to Stuff, Police charged her with breaching bail and endangering transport.
On 11 September, a High Court judge granted her bail. Stuff says she must obey a curfew, and not “encourage, support, entice, or organise any illegal protest activity” related to the fringe climate activist group, Restore Passenger Rail.
Rosemary returned to her home in Waitati.
A few weeks later, on 3 October she was sentenced in relation to the 2019 forgery convictions and was given 125 hours of “community service…currently playing scrabble with old people at a respite care centre for older people/respite care. dunedin.”
Rosemary Penwarden’s home is a four and half acre slice of countryside some twenty minutes by car north of Dunedin. Her children grew up here near Waitati, a township that has a pub, gallery hall, a general store and fire station. At times her backyard looks like a postcard of the French countryside.
She describes the area as “beautiful place to raise my children”.
In today’s exclusive podcast, we see Rosemary has lived as a farmer’s daughter, high school and varsity student, a bored and overworked laboratory worker, traveler in war-torn Guatamala, mother, grandmother and carer, and an activist. Enjoy.
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