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Pokemon GO: New Zealand Man Quits His Job To Hunt Pokemon Full-Time

By Coburn Palmer
Published on: 08:29 PST, Jul 15, 2016

If you’d rather hunt for Pokemon characters than go to work and file papers you’re not alone; one New Zealand man knows exactly how you feel.

Tom Currie, a 24-year-old from Auckland, quit his job last week so he could hunt Pokemon full-time and tour New Zealand on a two-month bus ride.

His goal is to capture all the elusive Pokemon characters available in the game, even the rarest and most elusive creatures, according to The Guardian.

“I wanted to have an adventure. I have been working for six years and I was desperate for a break. And Pokémon gave me the chance to live that dream.”

Less than a week after he quit his job, Currie has already developed his routine for hunting Pokemon. He wakes every morning and fills a flask with coffee, packs a lunch, and shoulders his rain jacket before heading out.

He has visited six New Zealand towns, booked 20 bus trips around the country, and captured 90 of the 151 Pokemon available in the game, including some of the most elusive characters.

He found Dragonair, Scyther, and Jynx in the rugged Kaikoura mountain ranges and water-dwelling Goldeen off the island’s west coast. Currie now walks “miles and miles” every day and sometimes stays out hunting Pokemon till 3:00 a.m.

The augmented reality game, Pokemon Go, was just released last week, but it’s already sweeping the nation and the world. The global phenomenon is now more popular than Netflix, Tinder, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

Currie joined about 100 other Pokemon hunters in the coastal New Zealand suburb of Christchurch this week, which has become a hot spot for players hunting the elusive anime creatures, he told The Guardian.

“Some of these people would usually be shut up at home and really reclusive. Hunting for Pokémon is bringing them into the real world. It was such a buzzy atmosphere, when someone spotted a rare Pokémon they would shout out to alert the crowd.”

Currie’s mother, Tania Dobbs, described her son as very independent and spontaneous, saying his two-month bus tour around New Zealand to hunt Pokemon was very like him, according to The Guardian.

“His nana and I don’t understand the game but I remember him loving it in his childhood. I am just glad he is out enjoying his life and seeing so much of New Zealand. I back him 100%.”

With no job, Currie has been forced to hunt for Pokemon on the cheap. He’s been sleeping on friend’s couches and in backpacker hostels to save money.

His trip has attracted support from travel companies across the country that have offered to take him around the country so he can hunt for the elusive Pokemon.

There’s no word yet on what Currie plans to do after he’s captured all New Zealand’s Pokemon, but maybe he’ll pay a visit to Kaitangata, that New Zealand town everyone thought was paying foreigners $160,000 to move there.

It turns out that wasn’t true, but the small town is suffering from a lack of workers, and its leaders are trying to attract laborers to fill empty jobs in their agriculture industry.

Maybe offering Pokemon characters to incoming workers would be a better incentive as that’s what real estate agents in New York and Brisbane have started to do. One ad in Brisbane mentions a nearby PokeStop as a selling point, according to News.com.au.

“Just across the road is a huge park with sporting facilities, and we’ve even spotted some rare Pokemon!”

What do you think? Would you quit your job to hunt Pokemon creatures full-time? Would you buy a house because it was near a PokeStop?

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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