You’ve probably heard Rob Holding’s voice on CFM – and chances are you’ve seen him out and about, connecting with our community and gathering local stories. In this piece, we share a bit more about Rob and his journey in radio.
What is your history with the Coromandel Area?
Sharon and I have holidayed here many times. We stayed a couple of times at Te Mata Lodge when the Wakelins owned it. Friends had a caravan-bach in Whangamatā that the whole family stayed at a few times.
There’s a lovely little retreat up in Wyuna Bay that Sharon and I really enjoyed, and our oldest daughter’s in-laws have a bach in Coromandel Town where we’ve all stayed at least once.
Sharon also ran the programme at a couple of Day Camps for Dave Sherriff in Whenuakite back in the early 2000s and was a big part of the children’s camps at Waihi Beach from 2012 to 2017.
Most recently, our youngest daughter and her husband have been involved in the New Year’s Beach Missions at Shelly Beach for the last three years. So yeah, we have a little bit of history here.
Sounds like you have a big family.
We have five children plus spouses and partners, and eleven grandchildren with number twelve due in December.
Where are you originally from?
I was born in Dunedin but haven’t lived there since 1993.
I’ve moved around a lot – Invercargill, Alexandra, Christchurch, Sydney, Auckland, Tauranga, Auckland again and now Katikati.
Sharon is a Bay of Plenty girl from Pikowai.
So where do you live now?
We still live in Katikati, where we moved 15 years ago. I stay in a little 2x4m cabin up behind the Thames hospital during the week and then head home on Friday night to remind my wife what I look like. We are looking at fully relocating to somewhere on the southern Thames Coast next year.
How long have you been in radio?
I got into radio in 1987.
Actually, it started a bit earlier as I went to Australia in ’85 to get into radio but I wasn’t really motivated and spent most of that year and a half selling lawn mowers and chainsaws during the day and sitting around a kitchen table in West Sydney smoking dope at night. So technically it was 40 years ago.
Lawn mowers and chainsaws? So, you’ve had a few different types of jobs?
As you do. I started life as an electrical comms technician trainee back in the mid 70s, sold outdoor power equipment for a long time, DJ’d a nightclub, worked in a computer store fixing computers, pastored a church for ten years, narrated a handful of audiobooks, packed kiwifruit for two and a half years, and now very, very grateful to be back in radio.
You’re also a musician?
You’ll notice I’m being interviewed as a broadcaster and not as a muso.
But yeah, I sing and play guitar and piano and write not nearly enough songs.
What do you like most about working in the Coromandel?
Most of the radio stations I’ve worked for were either city stations or nationwide.
Everything had to be generic. You couldn’t tell people to look out for the new pothole as you’re coming out of Ngatea just before the 70 kph sign, or that there’s been an accident at the roundabout in Pauanui.
I love being part of the localness of the Hauraki-Coromandel region. And I love the fact that the people in Te Puru don’t mind when I talk about stuff in Waihi.
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