Hi!
welcome to my blog, I hope you have a lovely time here.
Love Anna x
welcome to my blog, I hope you have a lovely time here.
Love Anna x
Kia ora! I’m Anna – the creator of She Hunts Op Shops, a passionate storyteller, creative reuse advocate, op shop addict, and sustainability nerd on a mission to sprinkle a little magic (and compost) over the world 🌱
Together with my husband Sean and daughter Frankie, we travel across Aotearoa, capturing the beauty of secondhand living – and sharing it through highly engaged social media, vibrant photo essays, and now, hopefully, offering... hands-on workshops!
She Hunts Op Shops connects with over 40,000 followers on Facebook and over 10,000 followers on Instagram – mostly wāhine aged 35–64, passionate about sustainability, creativity, op shops, mental health, and community.
In the last 3 months alone, we’ve hit 2.3 million views, with our photo-led storytelling outperforming reels by 87%.
🌏 Our audience spans Aotearoa and Australia and even dips into America and the UK, with high weekday engagement and a huge appetite for waste-conscious content with heart.
📣 Want to reach real people who are actively changing the way they think about waste, reuse, and creative living — and doing it through some of the highest engagement you might see on social media?
Because honestly, it’s kinda wild.
✨ You’re in the right place.
My husband Sean and I met over 20 years ago, and together we’ve built a life full of adventure, creativity, and connection. We have one beautiful daughter, Frankie — she’s almost 10 — and our little trio is happiest when we’re out exploring, collecting treasures, and soaking up the wild beauty of Aotearoa.
Before settling in Dunedin, Sean and I travelled the world together. I wandered through over 50 countries. These days, we’re focused on discovering the magic of our own backyard — road-tripping through New Zealand, raising Frankie, and finding joy in the simple, second-hand, and slow.
Alongside our love of travel and reuse, I’m also the founder of Pixie Rouge Photography — a business I ran in Melbourne for over a decade. It was a thriving, joy-filled chapter of my life where I was often booked out years in advance. I photographed hundreds of weddings and events, often orchestrating entire 12-hour celebrations, gently wrangling 300+ guests while capturing all the magic with calm confidence and creative flair.
These days, while my photography continues under the Pixie Rouge name, I split my time between capturing stories, creating content for She Hunts Op Shops, and running a family business with Sean.
Sean holds a degree in Sustainability, Environmental Science, and Economics, and together we run Awamoa Sanitation in Ōamaru — a thriving, boots-on-the-ground business offering septic tank and portaloo hire throughout the Waitaki region. It’s a far cry from glamorous, but it’s real, essential work — and we’re proud to serve our community with heart (and hygiene).
Sean is also a talented videographer. He films weddings alongside me, documents our life as a family, and channels his deep love for the environment into visual storytelling. While Awamoa Sanitation is his main focus these days, his passion for sustainability and conservation still shines through everything he does — and that filters down to me, whether he’s behind the camera or behind the wheel of a tank truck.
Featured in NZ Life & Leisure
As seen in the glossy pages of NZ Life & Leisure – celebrating op shops, sustainability, and storytelling with heart 💛
👉 Read the full article here
Seven Sharp Feature
Yes, that was us on Seven Sharp! From portaloos to op shops, we shared our story of running a waste biz with heart – and hunting for treasures along the way.
📰 Featured in the Otago Daily Times
Sean and I were proudly featured in the Otago Daily Times, sharing our journey from Melbourne to Ōamaru — and how we turned portaloos, septic tanks, and sustainability into a thriving family business.
We talked all things waste, community, and finding purpose in the unexpected.
🪠 Featured in On The Land Magazine (Print Only)
In this special feature, I was interviewed about sustainability in the septic tank world (yep — we really do talk sh*t for a living).
The article dives into proactive care, eco-friendly practices, and how we’ve built a business focused on preventing problems before they happen.
Photos and insights proudly supplied by yours truly.
🧼 Print only – March/April 2025 issue.
Featured In: Junkies Magazine
Back in 2019, I op shopped my way into Junkies Magazine—writing and photographing 4-page spreads for 8 whole issues. Think thrift thrills, vintage gold, and secondhand sass served fresh from Melbourne.
In 2019, we partnered with Shoalhaven City Council to create a dedicated She Hunts Op Shops & Nature Guide for the entire Shoalhaven region.
Over a 9-day content tour, we explored the area’s op shops, Buy Back Centres, natural landscapes, and sustainable initiatives — producing:
📸 Over 200 professional images
🎥 2 short films
📱 10 social media posts across 4 platforms
🤝 Coverage and support for local small businesses
We had the pleasure of meeting Mayor Amanda Findley over breakfast — and even took her op shopping! We were given a VIP tour of the Nowra Waste Centre, with a strong focus on sustainability, recycling systems, and landfill diversion.
In total, we visited 21 op shops, adventured into Shoalhaven’s lush forests and stunning coastlines, and curated a comprehensive guide blending second-hand shopping with nature-based tourism.
This collaboration was a joyful, community-focused project that highlighted the region’s commitment to sustainability and circular economy values — through storytelling, visuals, and a whole lot of heart.
Kristy Mayhew
Shoalhaven City Council, Tourism Marketing Specialist.
Winners of Gold 2018 NSW Tourism Awards, Destination Marketing, and Silver QANTAS Australian Tourism Awards.
’We fell in love with She Hunts Op Shops and her highly engaged audience and invited Anna , Sean and gorgeous Frankie on a trip to the Shoahaven. Their specialty is seeing the quirky beauty in what some locals may think is ordinary in their own towns. Their focus on sustainability, local characters and our humble op shops was a great way to promote lesser known regional towns to the modern young travellers and families who care about nature and our environment looking for a different and unique tourism experience.
On their 9 days in the Shoalhaven, they covered so much ground across 10+ towns and provided us with a constant stream of social media goodness followed by a number of blogs which were were able to promote through our own channels. The engagements and comments were more than we expected with people immediately trip planning after seeing out beautiful region through their creative and loving eyes.
They embraced our locals and featured them in a great light, even profiled our mayor and our waste departments buy back centres and recycling initiatives.
Along with op shops and forest adventures, they are real foodies and it was great for our cafes and local producers to be profiled for their unique offerings too.
The care and authenticity this family brings is a world apart from a traditional ‘influencer’ and what joy it was working with them and seeing how much they genuinely loved the experience made the entire process a pleasure! And not to mention the return on investment was huge - our image libraries now bulging with great content.
I couldn’t recommend them to other regional tourism bodies highly enough, let your retro and quirky side shine through whilst at the same time receiving beautiful images and videos for your own promotion and to assist your operators to promote themselves too!’
Sandra Englert
Retro Sands Home - Airbnb
‘It was an absolute pleasure and honour hosting Anna and her family at our holiday rental, Retro Sands Beach House, in Vincentia, Jervis Bay. The Shoalhaven City Council had asked Anna to create a guide using photography and film of the Shoalhaven area, featuring not only some of the most beautiful countryside and towns, but also some amazing local businesses including plenty of very quirky op shops of course. We were absolutely chuffed when we discovered they wanted to stay at our unique, retro beachcomber for 2 nights whilst they were in Jervis Bay. With our combined love of all things retro, we were the perfect match. As a small business, Anna’s visit, although short and sweet, introduced us to her very large social media following, which are exactly the type of guests we hope to attract. Anna took some amazing photographs of our property, capturing the true essence and love we have for our house. Within a few minutes of her 1st post, so many lovely, positive comments came flooding in and we instantly gained many new followers. We were also featured in her actual guide as a recommended place to stay, along with some photos of our property. With this sort of exposure, we are sure it will bring lots of new guests our way that also share our love for all things retro. We are most grateful for this. Anna is not your run of the mill photographers. Her originality and passion is evident in every photo she takes. Please check out her website and social media pages to view her outstanding work.’
