After many turns in the road, Deborah Paterson finds her calling behind the wheel of a milk tanker.

A forever plan to return to her dairy farming roots has taken a different shape than expected for 60-year-old milk tanker driver Deborah Paterson.

Paterson grew up on a dairy farm in Warkworth and endeavoured to become a farmer herself, but as she eloquently explains “when life doesn’t go right, go left”.

Paterson now lives in the tiny rural Southland town of Edendale, which has a population of 610.

Her parents originated from Southland and she sees it as a homecoming of sorts, and one where she is closer to her iwi.

“After 40 years of being Pākehā I realised that being Ngāi Tahu southern Māori was just as important a part of who I am and I started my journey home.”

The twists and turns to get here haven’t been what she’d describe as glamorous.

During her life in Auckland she went to ballet school, found an office job, became a kitchen designer and eventually joined the navy. She is the queen of reinvention.

Eventually after years of hard work she and her husband bought land in 2004 in the Kaipara Hills, but her dream was short-lived as the couple separated.

“My life doesn’t go in a nice, planned trajectory, as I have worked out.”

The land was sold and in 2011 she moved to earthquake-stricken Christchurch where she knew nobody.

“Broken cities and broken people go together quite well. Everyone down there was so broken that my brokenness blended in, really.”

A year shy of her 50th, divorced and flatting with five others in a single bed, farming was out of the question.

“For me it was like being in the navy, being in the dorms. It didn’t matter, it just didn’t matter.”

She found a country cottage in Rangiora that she could only afford because she halved the rent through doing farm chores.

She loved the feeling of being back on the land so much that she signed up for a Diploma in Agriculture at Lincoln University.

“My class called me Mum. I did my dippy at 52.”

She was successful in an internship with Ngāi Tahu Farming and worked on minimum wage again, all the while raising two teenage sons.

“When I got to the end of the internship, the farm job I had been working towards got restructured and wasn’t there, so it was time to reinvent myself again.”

She applied for over 50 farm jobs across the South Island.

“I think farm managers were a bit fascinated with this mid-50s woman who wanted to come farming.

“There was one farm I went to and mister and missus sat on either side of the table and the son, too.

“Missus turns to me and says ‘Right, I can’t do this PC bullshit.’ She asks, ‘Are you after my husband or my son?’

“I said ‘Neither, I have both, thank you.’ ”

She was unsuccessful in all applications but having got her Class 4 truck driving licence at age 15, she was hired as a freight truck driver, only to be laid off during the pandemic in 2020.

Her time in Christchurch wasn’t all heartbreak, however. Love struck for a second time when she met her partner, Mike.

Then more luck. Her uncle called to let her know the Invercargill marae needed rebuilding. Her 15 years in the navy, which included working at the marae, meant she was hired.

Given the task of applying for government funding, she wrote an application that brought in $9 million to rebuild. She was heavily involved in the build from beginning to end.

“I was pleased to step back and let what we call ahi kā take over – the people at home who keep the fires burning.”

The couple felt a sense of belonging to the south and looked at property.

“There were two places for sale in Edendale at the time. One was a beautiful five acre block with a great garden … but we bought what we could afford, which was the house directly beside the pub.”

Located in the heart of a rural community, she applied to be a Fonterra milk tanker driver and at 58, she landed a job back in dairying.

“I am finally at home. I have a different route every day, I never know where I am going. I get to see mountains, I get to see the ocean – you can’t get any better than that.”

In the job for two years, Paterson travels 400km a day on average, but it has its challenges for a 60-year-old woman.

“There is quite a bit of heavy lifting … It is building muscle memory and a technique that works for you. I am not the only girl driver.”

She hopes her story can inspire other women to take up the job, too, and said it’s a privilege to be welcomed onto farms and experience the back end of their operation.

“What hopefully I am doing is normalising it for women in the future.”

More: The Farmers Weekly Rural Living series highlights the rich diversity and people of Aotearoa New Zealand’s rural communities, farming families and contributions to the food and fibre sector.

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