Rob | Ōtangarei, Northland

“When I felt proud is when it hit Level 4, and our Prime Minister just shut all the borders, and I noticed how Kiwis all came together and started sharing stuff, and it was amazing. It was amazing.

I just felt proud to be a Kiwi. I made sure the internet was paid, because I’ve got four kids, four teenagers, and they had to do their schooling and stuff, which I hope they did. I was an essential worker for Food Rescue, Northland and we were, seven days a week collecting food, giving to wrap-around agencies, but I noticed when it did get up to lockdown, we got more food coming in, because they weren’t getting exported. 

Food Rescue, Northland -Whakaora kai. We just go around picking up surplus from anywhere. Food markets, orchards, people’s gardens that they’ve got too much surplus, we pick up, load it onto our website. Other agencies look at our website, can make an order, and it’s just nothing going to waste.

Because I grew up in Ōtara and it was quite hard, I’ve been on the other side of the fence, and when you make contacts with other people, sometimes I pick up from suppliers, and I give back to them, I don’t know, pick up fish, give them avocados, stuff like that. 

I love to see the smiles. We had six pallets of Easter eggs, and giving them to the kids in the lockdown, it was just amazing to see the smiles. Yeah, no judgement to anyone. First class, second class, middle class, no. I was collecting fish from New World. This is prime Kingfish, and I was given it to help over the lockdown. No-one’s allowed to go fishing and that, and we were dropping it off to kaumatua, kuia, families. To feel that feeling is just like, it makes you want to get up to go to work, yeah.

I grew up in Ōtara, south Auckland, and I got into a bit of trouble, and got sent up North on the land, to scrub-cut and all that on my whenua, then got married. I adopted my first girl, because me and the wife couldn’t have kids, and then a miracle came and now we’ve got four kids, and now two grand-children, and that’s probably how I came into this job, because I’m on the Board of Trustees, Marae Committee, and now I work for Food Rescue. I’m the oldest of nine, I brought up my siblings, my mum and dad passed away when I was 21. 

Life as it is, and planet Earth, and the bigger scale. I’m a dive instructor, and I’ve been diving, and I’ve been out there, and I just released how much rubbish that’s out there, it just builds up and builds up. I used to take students out diving. We used to go out there and just scuba dive, picking up rubbish and all that, underwater. All the rubbish. Sometimes you’ll find treasure in that, like spear guns and knives and stuff. Haven’t found any gold yet. One day.”