I was raised in Mangere in a quiet, safe cul-de-sac street with a diverse cultural neighbourhood, we had beautiful Irish, Dutch, European, Maori, Asian, Fijian, Samoan, Tongan families and we all owned our own homes through either Housing Corporation or Maori Affairs schemes. 

Our whanau were part of the Open Brethren church, and I was raised in a Christian home.  My mum was a talented musician, composer, and singer and she would hold singing classes for all the children in our street.  Children would often come over home just to hang out, we were all very close and looked out for each other.  My parents were always referred to as Aunty and Uncle.

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Under my mum’s tutorage we formed a singing group called The Melody Messengers consisting of six of us, all girls of the same age and all from our street.  We were in demand for singing engagements and my parents would chaperone us to the different bookings we had at the various churches and community events.  My mum also taught Kapa Haka, and all of us girls learned how to do the long poi where we would have two poi in each of our hands performing actions that looked like windmills.  Through our singing and Kapa Haka we became members of the Friendly Road Children’s Choir and we took our music and Maori culture on tour to the Pacific coast of the USA in 1980 where we performed at Los Angeles schools, at Disneyland in Anaheim, toured Portland Oregon where we performed our Kapa Haka on Oregon TV.  We toured Oahu, Hawaii and performed at the hotels at the famous Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, and we visited and performed at a native Hawaiian school.