Rae Roadley

Author's details

Name: Rae Roadley
Date registered: January 10, 2012

Biography

Rae is a journalist, freelance writer and writing tutor. Soon after returning to her hometown to work for Northland's daily newspaper, she met beef and sheep farmer Rex Roadley. He lived in a historic home at Batley on the Kaipara Harbour and after moving there, Rae reported on farming then wrote a newspaper column, The Country Side. Her wryly amusing tales of country life earned many followers and led her to learn more about the local people, past and present. She tells the story of her new life in 'Love at the End of the Road: Finding my heart in the country'.

Latest posts

  1. Rooting for the Kaipara Harbour — July 11, 2017
  2. It was a dark and stormy night — September 6, 2016
  3. Spark staff plant the Kaipara coastline — June 13, 2016
  4. Floss plays just for the fun of it — September 24, 2015
  5. Notebook made with love and a bit of Batley House — September 1, 2015

Author's posts listings

Aug 20

Activity vs achievement

Categories:

Fishing and the harbour, Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

by

Looking up the Otamatea River on a gorgeous morning

“Don’t confuse activity with achievement.” Last week a newspaper editor spoke these wise words while I was chatting with him on the subject of being busy. But how does one define which is which? I’m obsessed (mildly) with photographing the Otamatea River, usually in the morning. It occurred to me today, months after taking this …

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Aug 13

Cut! It’s Country Calendar

Categories:

Farming with the farmer, Fishing and the harbour, Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

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REx and Rae taking scallops from a dredge

The Country Calendar camera was rolling when the farmer flung himself off the couch and started crawling towards the kitchen. He’d been quietly reading the newspaper while producer/director Kerryanne Evans interviewed me. Before filming started, we’d gone all out to ensure silence because the smallest sound gets picked up by the high-tech equipment. The fridge …

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4 comments

Aug 03

Country Calendar crew is due

Categories:

Farming with the farmer, Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

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“I’ve got eagle eyes,” trilled the farmer in a most unfarmerly fashion while strolling down the hall and waving something small and shiny. “My watch!” I’d spent ages scouring the gravel road several kilometres from home where I was sure I’d lost it months earlier while moving bulls. Remarkably, it was in perfect condition which …

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7 comments

Jul 25

Midnight search and no rescue

Categories:

Farming with the farmer, Fishing and the harbour, Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

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Large Friesian bull in a paddock

As we are a fully trained search and rescue team thanks to a late night request to help find a fisherman missing on the Kaipara Harbour, here are some handy hints, with the tips following the lessons and the most important tip last because that was our learning process. The farmer and I were asleep …

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2 comments

Jul 15

Dogs and fishing don’t mix

Categories:

Dogs, Fishing and the harbour, Rae's Blog

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Floss, b/w border collie, at the shelly point at Batley

It’s commonly thought dogs are banned from beaches because they frighten some people, fight amongst themselves and leave smelly poos. But that’s not true – it’s because dogs are incompatible with fishing. They’re such greedy gutses they will nick your bait, hook, line but probably not your sinker and gobble down entire fish – including …

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5 comments

Jul 02

Rally big wheels say thanks

Categories:

Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

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At 7.30am last Saturday I was standing on a remote corner of a gravel road along with about 20 rally spectators, some of whom were cooking a barbecue breakfast. A few hours later the Brother Rally New Zealand roared around our road and, once again, the farmer and I were helping out to raise funds …

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Jun 18

Clever Kate

Categories:

Dogs, Farming with the farmer, Rae's Blog

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Farmers use special language to speak to dogs even though they – the dogs – can work things out themselves and understand conversational English. ‘The farmer’ appears to think dogs understand expletives and he uses terms like “Git away back” and “Git in behind” which I suspect are the farming equivalent of legalese which we …

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Jun 05

Tips for storm survival

Categories:

Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

by

River with white horse and eaves

Ice cream that’s been in a freezer with no power for 24 hours is like eating a vanilla-flavoured cloud from heaven. That’s one of the lessons the farmer and I have been taught by storms. With wet, windy and wild weather upon us, here’s some more: How to watch Coronation St during a power outage …

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May 29

A disturbing life in the country

Categories:

Rae's Blog, Random rural yarns

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Protesting the Kaipara District Council's long-term plan

Our quiet life in the country is now a deeply disturbing life in the country. On a recent sunny Saturday in the seaside town of Mangawhai, family members were painting slogans on banners for a protest march to a meeting organised by the Kaipara District Council. It attracted a couple of thousand people, for good …

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May 17

Floss the drama dog

Categories:

Dogs, Rae's Blog

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Floss on the beach

For an exciting few minutes I thought my dog Floss had medicated herself, although ripping off her loose toenail was never going to be in the same league as, say, repairing her smashed bone, regurgitating chocolate cake, fast tracking staples through her gut or preventing a gaping wound from becoming infected. But even though it …

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