Radio star Tim 'I OWE EVERYTHING TO MUM'

The ZB presenter recalls the impact Jenny had on his life

- Tim Roxborogh

I knew as soon as I heard the footsteps. At Mum and Dad's house in Dunedin, I'd been in and out of sleep for an hour, unable to slow my mind. The sound of my father's feet coming upstairs to the spare bedroom - the room with Mum's sewing machine, some of my old books and boxes of toys - told me what had happened before Dad spoke the words, 'Tim, Mum has just died.'

We'd been with Mum a couple of hours earlier at the rest home and I was so overwhelmed with emotion at seeing her so weakened, I could barely get a word out. We said we'd see her tomorrow - perhaps we thought we would.

It's a miracle I made it to see her at all. A couple of days earlier, I was with my wife Aimee and our two children Riley, then four, and Austin, almost one, in the rainforests of Southern Queensland's Lamington National Park.

We knew Mum, who was 77, was going downhill and unlikely to make it until Christmas, but this was June 2024 and we still felt there'd be time.

Mum had always been quite the adventurer. As a child, her thing was climbing trees. And as an adult, the life she and Dad built had them living everywhere from Auckland to Dunedin, Scotland to Malaysia.