New Zealand's oldest mail sorter is leaving her job - reluctantly. Sophie Bond finds out she's not at all the retiring type.
The woman at the door wears a slim-fitting dress, has slender, bare legs and gold spangly jandals. I thought I was taking a sweet old lady to lunch but quickly realise I could have taken Beryl Poa go-kart racing instead.
The 80-year-old smiles and gives us firm handshakes which leave the photographer exclaiming at her strength. She trots down the stairs, followed by her husband Johnny, and we head to Papakura town centre for lunch.
The cafe, Johnny recalls, was once a taxi rank. They both marvel at how Auckland has changed in the decades they've lived here. Sipping an L&P, Beryl explains she and her first husband got into the mail gig back in the 1960s.
"We had a rural delivery service. We used to do Weymouth. Then NZ Post took it off us and I had to train the posties to do it. For two months, they said, and 30 years later, I'm still here."
Mrs Poa's definitely got stickability and she'd be working into her 90s, given the choice. She looks mildly annoyed and tells me doctors have other ideas, unfortunately.
"I'm going off on medical retirement because I've got cancer. Last September, they gave me 18 months to live. Six months has gone but I don't feel any different to what I was 10 years ago."
She flings her hands in the air, "Nothing, I feel nothing. I wish I'd never found out, I really do."
The cancer was picked up by chance when she was X-rayed following a bout of bronchitis.
"There was a shadow on my lung, and there's some in my bowel now."
She and Johnny are seizing the spare time to take a one-month tour around Europe and the British Isles in May and perhaps a cruise later this year. Beyond that, well, Beryl just wishes she could carry on the mail sorting.
"I'm just supposed to sit around and die, am I? I feel like I'm 50. At work they say I get around better than the young ones do."
Perhaps it was the years of cycling around Weymouth as a postie that has kept her so fit. Or the huge productive garden she and Johnny tend to.
The couple met when Beryl began her mail sorting years in central Auckland. Johnny was her bus driver on the long, daily ride from Papakura. "I'd always fall asleep and he'd have to wake me up."
She worked on the third floor of the former central post office that is now the Britomart Transport Centre.
In 1998, Beryl took a break. "I got sick of the 11pm to 7am nightshifts. I did about 20 years of that."
She was asked back to her job in 2002 and said yes on the proviso she got day shifts. Since then, she has worked five and sometimes six days a week at NZ Post's sorting centre in Highbrook.
"Our day starts with setting up the trays and the mail has already been sorted into the Southern areas, so we've got to break it into Waimauku, Papakura, Manukau, etc. I'm going to miss it so badly, the people; and I enjoy sorting the mail. I never get bored with it, you get different mail every day."
I ask Beryl if she's heard the news NZ Post is about to close some of its Post and Kiwibank outlets. She's not surprised. She's seen staff numbers dwindle and mail volumes, too.
"The mail has gone down so badly. I really noticed it last year and it's just got worse and worse now. There's very little of people writing ordinary letters. It's mostly bills and advertising. Even birthday cards. I only noticed a few of those yesterday.
"At Easter, they used to give us an Easter egg and this is the first year we didn't get one, just shows you how it's going down."
Beryl's not too worried. NZ Post might be downsizing, but she feels there's a fair bit of gardening and travelling left for her yet.
Encounter: Beryl leaves her post
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