You can move away from Eastern Southland but it never leaves you

• Published date: 14 September 2021
• Publication title: Ensign, The

QWhat is your connection to Eastern Southland?

I grew up on a farm just outside of Edendale, and my parents still have a dairy farm smack between Edendale and Wyndham.

But if I were going to choose my home town, Edendale supersedes it, mainly because dad, my three brothers and I all played rugby for Edendale.

I still have a lovely connection with the place, I think.

I try to visit the farm when I get time. I have two nephews there; they are the best thing in my life.

I actually feel really lucky to be able to head down there and get my farm fix.

Part of me wishes I was a farmer myself, but I never would have handled it.

It’s tough, relentless, and I think Eastern Southland farmers just get on and deal with it.

They take the seasons as they come.

QWhere and when did you go to school?

I went to Edendale Primary, St John’s in Invercargill for a year, and St Thomas’s Primary in Winton when I was 10, as we did an eight-year stint deer-farming at Oreti Plains.

So Central Southland is pretty dear to my heart also.

I then went to Verdon College in Invercargill, then up the road to St Kevin’s in Oamaru.

Even then, I liked to shift about. I think I finished my last year of high school in 2006. I loved Edendale Primary.

My longest friendship still goes with my best mate there.

She has three kids and is married to a dairy farmer. I am the exact opposite; zero responsibility works best for me. Although I have two hens, Joy and Jean. They keep me busy.

QWhy did you leave?

I feel like this is a trick question that will get me into trouble.

I left because I needed to see the world, learn from it, get some variation into my life and just develop.

I went to university in Wellington, did a communications degree and a postgraduate diploma in journalism in Auckland.

I have been all over the show since.

In order, Wellington, Auckland, Queenstown, Melbourne, Spain, Wellington, France, Nelson, Christchurch, Wellington and now I am based near Hawea, in a little countryside cottage. I rent.

I’ve been a journalist for most of that time, predominantly writing.

Words have always been my passion.

I worked at New Zealand Rugby for a bit and travelled the world.

Sport journalism has been my mainstay and then I found myself on television.

The screen is something I never targeted, because I didn’t think I was really a television kind of woman.

I’m not polished. I am rough around the edges. I roll my Rs, and I love to laugh at my own expense.

I don’t take myself seriously.

But I appeared...