11 September 2022

Home to Roast

Manawanuitanga. Against the Grain.

writer: SIONAINN MENTOR-KING

photographer: MICHELLE MARSHALL

It’s hard to imagine Anne Carson as anything but an artist or craftsperson, but this great-grandmother of five has several feathers in her metaphorical cap. Not only has she worked for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, today she runs a boutique coffee roastery with her partner, delivering specialty beans all around the country.

Even after many years, Anne still isn't sick of the smell of roasting beans. "As a matter of fact, I think I'm probably not even aware of it anymore. People come into the roastery and they go, 'It smells so good in here!' And I say, 'Oh really?' I'll go somewhere and someone will say, 'Anne's here, I can smell coffee!' I must be carrying around the coffee fragrance in my clothes!"

It's clear at first glance that Anne is a creator. Standing in the doorway of her boutique coffee roastery, she gives off an aura of artistic chic. There's a dart board behind her, music posters and LPs on the wall, and Tiger Girl comic-book covers from the forties plastered all over the stairs.

If you're not from Northland, you might not be familiar with the town Anne, 71, calls home. Situated on State Highway 10, Kāeo - the "small town with the big spirit" - plays a crucial part in the Far North community, providing an essential link between the Bay of Islands and the Whangaroa Harbour. "It gets pretty busy down there actually," says Anne from her home, which lies in the bush-clad hills above the village. "But it wasn't that way when we came here twenty years ago. You wouldn't even have to look to cross the road at this time of year. Our property is very secluded. Not isolated, but secluded. Our roastery is down in town, so when we come home, we're very quiet."

Over the last two decades, Kāeo has become a bustling little centre, boasting cafes and restaurants, a museum, two second-hand shops, a culinary school and Tiger Mountain Coffee - the award-winning roastery Anne runs with Paul Tucker, her partner of thirty- five years. With only the two of them running the business, and both now in their seventies, this labour of love is a demanding vocation. "We're actually working quite hard," Anne laughs good-naturedly. Paul, who has been co-director of Friends of the Earth New Zealand since 1992, is also a jeweller, and Anne has a background in leather work. "We were both craftspeople, back in the early days, and roasting is very much a craft in itself."

Originally from Sydney, Anne moved to Aotearoa in her early twenties and lived in the Coromandel, where she raised her children. After moving her family to Auckland in the early nineties, Anne became the deputy director of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, now known as the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa - a critical organisation in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

"By 1991, the Homosexual Law Reform Act had gone through, but we were still working on the human rights amendments and doing a lot of research," Anne says, remembering the impact of the virus on many communities in Aotearoa. "We were working in that personal and public health area, but also politically, to get things through. It was a very challenging time. We did a lot of work, a lot of social events, fundraising, that sort of thing. It was also a fight to get the drugs that were needed because they were still being developed at the time. The virus used to kill a lot of people back then, but now medical science has come a long way and I know a lot of people who are living with it quite well."

Anne is modest about her time at the foundation, but the accomplishments achieved during the thirteen years she was there are something to be celebrated. "I was in administration and played a back-role but I'm particularly proud of the impact we were able to have in reducing the stigma attached to the virus and the broader LGBTQ community."

Anne on the stairs with a poster of American blues singer Koko Taylor on the wall

A poster of American blues singer Koko Taylor on the wall at Tiger Mountain Coffee.

After devoting more than a decade of her life to the foundation and the Rainbow community, Anne knew it was time to bring her energy back home. "I felt like I had done my thing in Auckland," she says. "By the time I had finished at the AIDS Foundation I was ready to move onto something else."

Having found a piece of land in Kāeo, Anne and Paul left Auckland for the Far North. They don't regret their move from the city. But living in small town New Zealand in the early 2000s meant they were cut off from something most Kiwis these days struggle to live without - good coffee. "We found this beautiful bush block that we just fell in love with and I worked part-time with the AIDS Foundation for a while, but I was finding I was spending half my time away," Anne says. "Paul had been interested in coffee for a while and when we came here he just started getting it together using popcorn roasters."

However, they soon realised for the quantity they needed, roasting coffee at home was a little too much. "When I look back on it, it's hilarious. I used to arrive home and there'd be bloody popcorn roasters all over the house and we were sitting on bags of green beans in the lounge! But people wanted it! There wasn't very much good coffee up here. So Paul put together a coffee van and we did the Bay of Islands farmers' market for a few years. The idea of the farmers' market is to promote your product until you're ready to leave and make room for somebody else. And that's what we did," Anne says.

Though many in the Whangārei region assume Tiger Mountain Coffee is somehow related to Mount Tiger, a hill near the city, the name is in fact inspired by Paul's time in Indonesia, where he heard tigers roaring in the mountains. Their brand has made a name for itself in the New Zealand coffee scene, and Anne and Paul now sell their coffee nationwide. "We courier all over New Zealand, even though we don't have a website. People can't believe it, but we're still here, twenty years later. We are on Facebook and I get orders off there, which I'm always surprised about. But the orders come in, and off it goes. Even to Stewart Island."

Anne loves the peace and quiet of Kāeo and the supportive nature of a community where everyone knows each other. She enjoys being her own boss and when asked about retirement, she just laughs. "We talk about it sometimes, but we don't seem to get any further than that. It gets us up in the morning, you know? It keeps us well occupied. The coffee thing just keeps us in touch with everything."

Anne and Paul’s current coffee roaster. Anne describes their growth: “We went from popcorn roasters to a five-kilogram roaster, to a fifteen-kilogram roaster and then we moved down the road because it was just getting too big.”