Dunedin mum's triumph FROM HOMELESS TO NOVELIST

How Angela turned a lockdown disaster into a win for her career and her intrepid family.

- Florence Hartigan

Moving house may be one of life’s most stressful events, but author Angela Armstrong is an expert. In the past 18 months, the wandering wordsmith and her family have moved more than 30 times!

The Dunedin woman, 38, her husband Haki, 40, and their daughters, Lucia, 12, Wesley, 10, and Belle, eight, were left homeless when their year-long house-sitting stint was canceled due to the COVID-19 lockdown. But the mum-of-three has turned lemons into lemonade, figuring out an unusual way to keep a roof over her family’s heads, while still finding time to achieve her dream of becoming a novelist.

In 2019, the Otago whanau had been looking to move north when their hobby provided the exit strategy they’d been searching for. “We’d signed up to a house-sitting website and had been doing it for fun,” tells Angela. “We loved it – looking after people’s animals was a big plus for my kids – then one day, a 12-month house-sit came up near Whangarei.”