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‘You are from Port Macquarie? Well do you know the Curry Lady?’ This was an odd question to be asked at 33,000 feet onboard a Qantas A380 Flight from Sydney to Singapore in 2018. ‘Of course I know the Curry Lady’ I said to the Hostie - everyone knows the Curry Lady.
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ell I never… now this was a story I wanted to know more about so I eventually caught up with Raye herself to find out just how she became the ‘Curry Lady’. Louise Beaumont chats to Raye Alford about her business Off the Rayles which has soared in popularity since beginning on her kitchen table just 4 years ago, to now selling her 54,000th packet! Hi Raye, it was a funny place to be over the Java Sea mid-flight to meet the man
18 GREATER PORT MACQUARIE
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whose family taught you to cook Indian Curry – and there is so much to the story so let’s start at the beginning. Your career with Qantas began in 1982 in their scheduling department – what exactly was your role? Haha what a small world we live in…! That was my flight attendant friend Satesh you met on the aeroplane and his sister Aruna who took me to India all those years ago. Never in a million years would I have imagined myself running a curry biz and being known as ‘the Curry Lady!’… In 1982 I took 12 months leave from my job in NZ to stay with my 2 sisters in Sydney,
landed a job with Qantas, and there I stayed for 32 years! It was an exciting role as Duty Manager in Aircrew operations, monitoring aircraft movements to ensure the pilots and flight attendants stayed within their operating limitations. Dealing with the ‘issues’ that resulted in delays and diversions our team would re-crew the aircraft to minimise further disruption to the Qantas schedule. I took a redundancy package about 6 years ago. I don’t miss the stress but I do miss the people, Qantas was a fabulous company to work for. It was in 1986 on a holiday to India that you stayed with an Indian family. Where
