The weekend saw a Fonterra-style funeral to farewell Andy Oliver, whose joy for life and for milk-collecting tankers was unrivalled. Indira Stewart reports.
Andy and the global dairy giant – Watch the full story on TVNZ+.
This milking season, when Fonterra tanker drivers reach the familiar long-stretching driveway of the Olivers’ Te Rapa, Waikato dairy farm, their routine will be remarkably different to how it’s been for more than 20 years.
Last week, tanker driver Kevin Healey drove his tanker to Ken Oliver’s farm and left with a vibrant crayon-drawing, decorated with more than a dozen stickers and sketched by Ken’s 41-year-old son Andy Oliver.
Before he died on July 16, Andy had made a final drawing for his tanker driver mates, marking the end of an unusually special milk-collecting routine that made headlines across Aotearoa and turned Andy into an internet sensation.
‘He had an incredible mind’
If miracles exist, you might’ve seen one during milking season on a dairy farm in Te Rapa, just before Andy’s bedtime. He’d be zooming down his driveway on his adult-sized tricycle, wearing a high-vis Fonterra jacket and cap.
Andrew Oliver, or Andy as he was known, was the only person in New Zealand diagnosed with Fryns-Aftimos syndrome and the oldest known survivor of the syndrome in the world. The rare genetic disorder brought physical and intellectual challenges and, combined with his severe epilepsy and other complex symptoms, Andy was a daily miracle to those who knew him.
“He had an incredible mind,” his mother Deidre Oliver says. “And his body was like clockwork. There were certain things that had to be done before he went to bed and [greeting] the tanker was one of them.
Funeral to be held for man with rare condition who formed a deep bond with Fonterra tanker drivers. (Source: Breakfast)
“Everything had to be done in the right order. He had to draw a picture for the tanker drivers, he had to put on his Fonterra uniform, he had to watch ‘Dan the weatherman’ on the 6pm news and wouldn’t have his bath and go to bed until the tanker had visited.”
In the past, when the tanker’s routine was unpredictable, that sometimes meant that Andy’s parents Ken and Deirdre, were up until 3am.
For years they managed it, until one day in 2015 Ken hit the wall. ”Deirdre had a minor stroke. I was absolutely out on my feet trying to keep the farm going and surviving on 3-4 hours sleep and I’d just run out. And so I phoned the call centre and actually started crying on the phone. I said, look my life has just become impossible and I can’t get sleep until this boy’s in bed,” he told RNZ at the time.
Global dairy giant Fonterra changed its milk tanker schedule in Te Rapa, a district of more than 1000 farmers, just so Andy could go to bed on time. Four years later, his story went public and reached millions. Fonterra’s then spokesperson Barry McColl told RNZ the company had never before changed its milk tanker schedule to accommodate someone’s bedtime. But they did it for Andy.
‘You realise how lucky you are’
“It’s a special relationship and everybody knows Andrew,“ said tanker driver Kevin Healey in 2019. “He draws a picture for us and we take it back to the office and we put them up on the wall at work. He asks us what we’ve had for dinner, whether we’d been to see Mr so-and-so down the road. He asks us about the tanker.
”You realise how lucky you are that you’re able to do this.”
The cherished friendship changed Andy’s life and theirs. Whenever a tanker visited it would blast its horn as it made its way down the driveway. A call met by the furious jingle of Andy’s bike bell before he tailgated the tanker on his tricycle. Andy’s tricycle was one of his favourite possessions, gifted to him by his tanker driver mates years ago. It had a license plate at the back that read “Andrew, Fonterra’s No 1 Fan.”
Over the past year, as Andy’s health worsened, the sight of him hooning down the driveway on his trike became less frequent. He struggled to make it to the tanker on time in the evenings and eventually one of his carers began to drive him there. Some days, he’d place his drawings inside the key box by the milk vats during the day. In return, drivers would leave him a note and sometimes a treat and blast their tanker horn as they drove past his house so he knew they’d been.
When Healey visited the farm last week, he looked inside the box to find Andy had left behind one last final drawing. ”We’ve had time to look back and we now recognise that things were winding down, that he was coming to the end of his life,” he says.
Andy wasn’t expected to reach age 21 but for 41 years, he defied all odds. “He was always the come-back kid. I kind of expected him to come back from this one but it was his time and as Andy has always done, he did it his way. You could almost sort of hear him say, ‘well I’ve had enough of this, I’m out of here’ and that was him,” says Ken.
Andy died peacefully at Waikato Hospital on July 16, having had pneumonia. Deidre says, “Looking back now, his body was starting to have had enough.”
It was five days before milking season started up again. Ken says, “His last words to me were, ‘Dad, I love you. Don’t forget to do the silage.'”
Incalculable riches
On Saturday, Andy was laid to rest in a custom-made coffin covered in pictures of a tanker, firetruck, a digger and his beloved trike. He was dressed in his high-vis shirt and cap, and his trike sat in the foyer of the Salvation Army City Corps, where his service took place.
Andy’s service was a celebration, unconventional for the long-standing Salvation Army family and perfect for him. As his coffin was carried into the venue, the opening theme song from the classic Thunderbirds TV show rang through the church speakers. Instead of hymns, family and friends sang songs Andy loved to sing himself, including Silent Night. His siblings, Daniel, Jared and Kimberlee, along with their spouses, carried out Andy’s coffin to ‘Hakuna Matata’, from the Lion King soundtrack, one of Andy’s favourite movies. As a final farewell from his tanker driver mates, Kevin Healey followed behind the hearse, as it carried Andy’s coffin down Hamilton’s Harwood St, in a milk tanker.
“Every now and then, I guess we’ll hear the tanker go by and it’ll remind us and that’s a good memory. A very good memory because you move on with life, you have to,” Ken says.
Andy leaves behind a mission for his mum and dad. In 2019, Ken and Deirdre opened Kōwhai House, right next to their farm, where people with similar needs to Andy’s could be supported to live as independently as possible with carer support. Andy lived there with two flatmates, also living with disabilities, Mike and Tim.
“With whatever’s left in our lives we want to continue that work and dream on Andrew’s behalf,” says Ken. “It’s very easy to think that a person who cannot express themselves somehow is stupid or not worthwhile but we know otherwise.
“He has enriched our lives in ways that you cannot calculate and now we’re just looking back, so grateful.”
The Olivers have a Give-A-Little page to raise funds for Kowhai House.
Andy and the global dairy giant – Watch the full story on TVNZ+
