Heather Tindall Robillard is an LBI Realtor, lifelong island-obsessive, and 25-year Barnegat Bay boater. She's the editor, writer, and chief storyteller behind South of Old Barney — a blog dedicated to the history, heritage, and homes of Long Beach Island, New Jersey.
By trade, Heather has spent nearly a decade helping people find their piece of this island through her real estate practice, Move Me to LBI. But what she loves most isn't the transactions — it's the stories. The history tucked into the cedar-shake cottages. The heritage living quietly in the names of the streets and the families who built them. The architecture that tells you everything about who we were and who we're becoming. The homes that hold a hundred summers of memory inside their walls.
South of Old Barney is where she gets to explore all of that — one story at a time, written by someone who has spent a lifetime paying attention.
Old Barney himself — the Barnegat Lighthouse, standing sentinel at the northern tip of LBI since 1859 — has watched over this island through storms and summers, through change and continuity. Everything south of him is the island Heather knows and loves. He felt like the right place to start.
Meet the Editor
This isn't a travel blog. It's not a listicle of top 10 things to do on LBI. And it's definitely not a real estate pitch dressed up as content.
South of Old Barney is for the people who feel something when they cross that bridge — and for the people who haven't crossed it yet but already sense they might belong here. You'll find stories about the island's past and present: the storms that reshaped it, the families that rebuilt it, the homes that have stood through it all, and the quiet, salt-weathered details that make this place unlike anywhere else on the Jersey Shore.
Some posts will be deep dives into LBI history. Some will be love letters to a single street, a single building, a single stretch of bay. Some will be about the homes themselves — not listings, but the stories they carry.
All of it comes from the same place: someone who loves this island deeply, took the photo, and wants you to see what she sees.
What you'll find here
When she's not writing here or helping clients find their forever-summer home, you'll find Heather out on the bay. She's been boating around LBI for 25 years and counting. She believes flip flops are always the right choice. She thinks the best conversations happen on docks. And she's firmly convinced that this island deserves to be known not just for its beaches, but for the remarkable story it has been telling since long before any of us arrived.
Want notes from LBI in your inbox every Tuesday? Heather sends market news, island stories, and honest advice that feels less like a newsletter and more like a text from a friend who just happens to know everything about this island.