Heather Barrow’s comfort zone has shifted in the last few years, from leaping about as New Zealand’s first Zumba instructor to slipping into something a bit more comfortable. But none of this has happened by choice.
Heather and husband Clive were ticking along nicely, running two small businesses before Covid delivered the first blow and changed the course of their lives, slowing both income streams to a trickle. Then the Cyclone Gabrielle dam burst, unleashing a torrent of disaster in the young family’s home district of Puketapu, and their lives were once again put on hold.
“We were surrounded by floodwater. The community had meetings twice a day to touch base. And then the Air Force turned up and said, ‘Women and children first’,” Heather says.
The family was given 10 minutes to get in the chopper, including two-year-old daughter Grace and their pet dog. After being evacuated from their Swamp Rd home, the family spent a couple of weeks in an Airbnb “kindly donated” by the owners. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
“We couldn’t work. And then my sister-in-law in Australia moved to England and sold us the rest of her Ugg business stock.”
