'My big year of change

Turning 70 has made Peta Mathias more determined than ever to chase new adventures. She tells Emma Clifton about the joys of village life in France, her cure for loneliness, and vows 2020 will be another year of reinvention.

- Emma Clifton

If you’re Peta Mathias, and you’re turning 70 while travelling through a variety of beautiful parts of the world, you’re not going to limit yourself to just one birthday cake, are you? At the tail-end of last year, Peta enjoyed a month-long birthday celebration that took her from her home in Uzès, France, all the way to her home in Auckland – via a 10-day gourmet tour she led through India. The cake count stands at around 14: there were three macaroon-flavoured cakes presented at a party in Uzès, decorated to perfection and in the shape of a “7”, a “0” and a great big heart. In Rajasthan, the local tour manager insisted on a cake and celebration – complete with singing – every single night. And then back home in Westmere, Auckland, there was a two-layer lemon meringue creation by her good friend and fellow chef Julie Le Clerc.

“I’m looking on it as a milestone in my life, I am not looking at it as slowing down or retiring or anything at all like that,” Peta says, sitting in the sunny lounge of her Auckland home. “I’m making a resolution to myself that this is the year I’m going to make changes.”