A Moving Tale Kevin's Heart-Wrenching Call

As Their Last Child Flies, The Empty Nesters Face a New Life

- Julie Jacobson

The fireplace in the lounge of the family's recently purchased Raumati Beach cottage is set and about to be christened.

Linda and daughter Tommie are looking for matches, unsure of where they might be after the melee of the recent move.

Husband Kevin, the Weekly’s consumer columnist, throws open the sliding doors that lead out onto the front deck and generously offers a tip on fire-lighting. A draught, he announces, helps draw the fire.

But one glance across to where the former Fair Go host is standing, and you can forget the fire, the view is jaw-dropping. Kapiti Island looms directly in front of us and waves crash onto the shore just metres away. You can only imagine the sunsets.

The relocation from the 4.7ha Waikanae lifestyle property they owned for 25 years has been bittersweet for Linda, Kevin and their youngest child Tommie, who, at 18, had lived in the big, two-storey, five-bedroomed house her entire life.

The tight-knit trio had been mulling over a change of scenery for some time. Sons Alex (36), Rory (33) and Jake (29) all fled the nest years ago and the house was, as Kevin puts it, “getting a bit echoey”.

“With the boys gone and just the three of us, it was just too big. We were heating rooms we weren’t using, crazy!”

While he and Tommie were definitely more at ease about leaving their semi-rural idyll, with its grove of Japanese cherry blossoms and protected native forest, than kindy teacher Linda, Kevin and Linda agree the years spent there were some of the happiest of their lives.

Tommie talks of the private swimming hole they had – the property was bounded by the Waikanae River – and of the many hours they spent there during long, hot summers.