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He’s a green-eyed charmer and dashing dresser, regularly snapped sipping champagne and mingling with A-listers at all the right events.

But when the party’s over, it’s to good old Mt Albert that local boy-turned-international model and television personality Colin Mathura-Jeffree heads home.

Fiercely proud of the suburb he grew up in and returned to after a successful stint overseas, our very own local celebrity wouldn’t consider living anywhere else in Auckland.

Mt Albert, he says, was and remains “proper New Zealand”. With its strong sense of community and happy family memories, living here suits him right down to the ground. And it’s got great cafes!

Colin’s career trajectory is the stuff of a movie script — good-looking and colourful Anglo-Indian lad raised in suburban Auckland who was discovered one day as he walked down Queen St with his sister.

His modelling career saw him walking for Versace and led him to India — the first in four generations of his family to go — where he was based for several years.

Then it was back to New Zealand, where he quickly built a profile as a fashionista and social butterfly. But don’t be fooled, it’s not all parties and play. He has built a successful business being Colin Mathura-Jeffree, model, brand ambassador and television host.

Before all that, there was growing up in Sandringham and Mt Albert. The very charming Colin was clearly always popular. As a youngster, he was always part of a moving mass of kids at play roaming the streets and up on the mountain itself after school.

Many of the friends he made at Edendale Primary have remained friends for life. His Facebook page shows photos from a reunion held at the Lord Kitchener bar in Sandringham at the end of last year. Of course, everyone’s much older, but they’re still teasing him about his enduring passion for dinosaurs.

Colin’s early years were spent in Sandringham, before the family moved more into Mt Albert so he and his elder brother could attend Mt Albert Grammar School.

Growing up as an Anglo-Indian in 1970s Auckland had its interesting points, even without a colourful personality and pronounced love of fashion.

He remembers staying over at friends’ houses and struggling through offerings of curried sausages from well-meaning parents. “They told me it was something they thought I might like,” he says.

“After that, living in India was an interesting experience. In New Zealand, we were considered Indian, but in India I was considered a New Zealander,” he says.

MAGS, too, was largely a happy experience. Despite being “rather naughty”, he claims to have stayed out of any serious trouble, although he remembers run-ins with staff, caused not so much for what he had done but who he was.

Things came to a bit of head in his seventh-form year. At the start of term one, he remembers being summoned, against a background of oohs and aahs from classmates, to the office of then-headmaster Greg Taylor.

“We hadn’t crossed paths before and Mr Taylor said he wanted to meet me. I had received the highest number of votes for prefect from staff and fellow pupils and he wanted to know why.

“Quick as a flash I replied, ‘Because it’s a boys’ school and I have a very beautiful sister’.”

Colin also remembers leading a mini rebellion against the newly introduced school uniform. There was no way he was going to be seen in polo shirt and shorts — “that was far too low rent”.

Instead, he marched off to the school uniform shop, found a school tie, and together with a group of like-minded friends turned up in white shirt and tie and trousers.

“We got a lot of support from a lot of people in the community. They thought we looked very sophisticated and like students from a private school, which they liked.”

These days, he lives in the heart of Mt Albert and is busy preparing for his new television show, The Great NZ Dance Masala, an Indian dance competition series.

If you see him at a local cafe, chances are he’s there for a business meeting — “I always arrange to get them to come and see me in Mt Albert.”

Good to know that Mt Albert remains a key part of the Colin Mathura-Jeffree brand.

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The Owairaka Ratbaggers group has been working to rid the Mt Albert/Owairaka Domain of the pesky predators since August. They are now looking to ramp up the project by encouraging more locals to trap rats in their own back yards.

“We’ve started with the jewel in the crown and tackled rats on Owairaka Domain, jointly with the Tupuna Maunga Authority,” says Stefan Rueegg, one of the 15 ‘ratbaggers’ who all live within a couple of minutes of the mountain.

“This is coming along nicely and should help our native birds thrive, but we are now looking to expand our scope down the slopes of the mountain.”

The aim of the group (pictured) is to establish a network of traps – one in at least every fifth property – to provide a halo around Owairaka to prevent rats invading from surrounding areas. The area in their sights stretches from Oakley Creek in the south and west, to the rail tracks in the north and Mt Albert Rd in the east.

“If we can achieve this, it will connect us with the great work done by other groups along Te Auaunga/Oakley Creek and Meola Creek,” says Stefan. “One person trapping makes little difference to the rat population but a community working together can be a powerful force.”

The group have just received a $2500 grant from the Albert Eden Local Board to help with their goal. This means they can supply traps to residents in return for a commitment to keep them set during their trapping months of August, November, January and April. These periods, known in the trade as ANJA months, are strategically important times in the rat life cycle and will coincide with baiting in the domain.

The group’s vision is a predator-free neighbourhood so Owairaka can be a stepping stone for native birds flying between the Waitakere Ranges and the Hauraki Gulf’s pest-free islands.

The ratbaggers maintain just over 40 bait stations on the domain, and hot spots are backed up between “pulses” (the setting of baits in the stations) with traps.

“Poison is the most effective method to knock the population on its head, and we have worked with the Tupuna Maunga Authority to develop a way to do this safely,” says Stefan. “A similar group is using the same approach at Big King Reserve.”

The group uses poisons already commonly available over the counter. The solid bait blocks are secured inside locked boxes that cannot be accessed by children or dogs.

The group were proactive in reaching out to dog walkers, who were pleased that the rat population was being targeted and gave valuable information as to where their dogs found rats.

Those wanting more information on trapping on their property, and to join the group, can visit the website or email [email protected].

Jenni Austin

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Former Mt Albert resident, and one of the New Zealand army’s most senior women, Lieutenant Colonel Esther Harrop has recently returned from a nine-month deployment in the fledgling  east African country.

While there she worked closely with former Mt Albert MP David Shearer, who is heading the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission.

In her role as the New Zealand Senior National Officer and Military Assistant, she provided advice on the military aspects of the mission.  The country gained its independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long-running civil war.

A former head girl of Marist College, Esther Harrop grew up on the slopes of Mt Albert.

While home base is now Wellington, she still visits family and friends in Mt Albert from time to time.

“In fact, I passed through Mt Albert on the way to the airport the other week to visit a friend who is living at the top of Kitenui Ave,” she says.  “It was a total blast from the past to drive up that road.

“St Mary’s Church featured pretty large in my childhood.  Christenings, Christmases, funerals, weddings –  they all happened there.”

The  youngest of five children, she attended Marist School with her four brothers.

“It was the same school  my father Paul (Harrop) and his brothers and sisters went to.  A bunch of my cousins went there too.”

Esther Harrop and her brothers were in the Mt Albert Youth Orchestra, now known as the Aotea Youth Orchestra, which was started by her father and Laurie Soljak in the mid-1980s.

“We used to practise at Ferndale, then the War Memorial Hall. We toured all over the world with that orchestra. It is still going – and my Dad still conducts it.”

She remembers that as a child she used to love hanging out up the mountain.

“My brothers and I would take cardboard and slide down the grass slopes up the back of our place – avoiding the cow pats, of course.”

She also remembers walking home from school and helping themselves to feijoas from the trees that lined Alberton Ave in those days.

Esther joined the army full-time after completing a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Auckland, having spent her student years in the Territorials.

Since finishing her posting in South Sudan, she has returned to New Zealand and is now the Deputy Director Defence Engagement – Regional.  Based in Wellington, she is responsible for defence engagement in South East Asia and the Pacific.

“It’s a really busy job, with lots of interesting work and a wide variety of opportunities to explore. I travel a lot, but am enjoying being based back in New Zealand with my family.”

Esther now lives just north of Wellington in Pauatahanui, with her husband and four sons.

Jenni Austin

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Marian Caulfield, who took up the reins at our oldest primary school at the beginning of the fourth term, spent several years at Gladstone Primary as deputy principal in the 1990s.

It was the memory of her time at Gladstone that tempted her to make the move from Dominion Road Primary, where she had been principal for the past 17 years.

“Working in the Mt Albert community again really appealed to me and I had heard good things about this school, so this opportunity came up at a good time,’ she says.

Marian Caulfield (pictured here with some of the school’s pupils) is described in Dominion Rd Primary’s most recent ERO report as a “respected and trusted principal”.

She says her first priority is to get to know her new school community and has lost no time in arranging a series of sessions during her first month at the school for parents to meet her.

It is, she says, too early to start talking about her aspirations for the school, but her first impressions are of a friendly and diverse school community, with pupils and families engaged in learning.

The new principal is diplomatic in her choice of words when questioned about perceptions that the school may not be the preferred option for many families in the community.

“Every school wants to be the school of choice for their community – Mt Albert Primary School is no different to that, and I will be working with staff and board towards that goal.”

Mt Albert Primary school was established in 1869, and now has 23 classes, with a staff of 35 and a roll of over 500 pupils.

The school has seen considerable roll growth in recent years, particularly across the last 18 months, prompting the introduction of an enrolment zone earlier this year of which a portion overlaps neighbouring Gladstone School’s zone.

This is quite a turn-around from the previous two decades where the roll languished compared to neighbouring schools, hitting a low of 153 in 2005.

Former Principal Unasa Enosa Auva’a was farewelled from Mt Albert Primary at the end of Term 1 this year, after spending 26 years at the school.

Jenni Austin

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