Elaine Kirkland - Elaine Kirkland

The eldest daughter of renowned Routeburn Station runholder ‘Wattie’ Watson, Elaine Kirkland has always been a practical woman who remains unfazed and gets the job done.

That’s probably why she’s been at the forefront of some of Glenorchy’s most successful fundraising campaigns, a community building with medical rooms and library, and a community swimming pool among them. Elaine’s had a good go at getting a local museum up and running too, serving on various committees for more than 20 years, also running Glenorchy’s Spring Flower Show which just celebrated its 72nd year.

Elaine was also a highly trusted member of Blanket Bay’s housekeeping team where discretion was key. Even at 77 she still ‘can’t confirm’ which famous movie stars she cleaned up after. However, she once tipped out two half-filled glasses of red wine left in a room by American guests, causing quite a stir. “It was a $350 bottle they’d left to breathe while out for the day,” Elaine grins.

Most of her childhood was spent on Routeburn Station, initially run by her mother’s parents Lewis and Helen Groves then bought by Wattie in 1954, and on Wattie’s Speargrass Flat farm. At first Wattie worked the station all week and Speargrass Flat, where his wife and five kids lived, at weekends. “Mum would drive him to Wilson’s Bay on Sunday, and he’d walk to Glenorchy then Harry Bryant picked him up in his little boat and took him to Kinloch.” In 1958, aged 11, she left Arrowtown’s two-room school for life back on the station, and Correspondence School.

“We used horses to cross the Dart River if the lake was rough, or we’d go down to Kinloch and cross to Glenorchy in Harry’s boat, no life jackets, often at night if the pictures were on in Glenorchy.”

The Lake Hayes Show, then in March, was a big highlight, and with no road then to Queenstown head of the lake families packed onto the TSS Earnslaw. “We got a new dress for summer every spring and wore it to the show,” Elaine recalls. Even better, sweets were sold in the boat tearooms. Holidays were spent helping Connie Bryant make lunches for Routeburn Bus tourists, 300 a day in peak summer.

The family had various governesses and after two years at Timaru Girls’ High from fifth form, Elaine and one of the governesses ran the Glenorchy grocery store. “I came home after boarding school and Dad said, ‘Here’s the shop to run’.”

At 20, Elaine married Dunedin builder Ian Kirkland, who went on to become a respected, long-time Queenstown Lakes District councillor.

Ian (‘Kirkie’) scored a job on a rugby trip to Australia and their year there turned into 15 overseas.
Back living with Elaine’s family in Invercargill, Ian got off the phone one day and said, ‘Where’s Algeria because I just took a job there?’ Elaine says. Off they went in 1975 with a six-week-old baby and preschooler for a three-year adventure. “We didn’t really know what we were going to, so we didn’t worry.”

Ian worked for a big American infrastructure company, which also saw them doing two stints in Papua New Guinea. Ian also worked in Iran, where Elaine and the children were due to join him, just before trouble and unrest struck. “I didn’t get there. I was disappointed. It was the time of the Shah being kicked out.” With shooting breaking out Ian and the crew, working in an isolated area, had to escape to Teheran awaiting a flight out. “He said it was absolutely dreadful like we saw recently with masses of people trying to grab hold of, and get onto, every plane.”

After no ability to communicate for a month Ian turned up in a taxi in Invercargill with a giant doll and electronic robot for the kids. “Three Americans and Ian locked themselves in a stone building for four days playing poker and he won all the money,” Elaine chuckles. The Persian rug he bought her turned up three months later still tied to his suitcase that had been lost in the chaos.

After their last stint in Papua New Guinea, they moved back to Glenorchy in 1984, throwing their energies behind community projects and major fundraising drives, earning Elaine a Heart of the District Award in 2006.

They also owned grocery stores in Glenorchy at times. Having lived in semi-dangerous territory with kids and no phone, Elaine had to dig for patience during the 1994 Glenorchy Race Day floods. “The drunks were swimming on the racetrack and the Police were trapped between washouts on the Glenorchy Road,” she says. “This woman saw Choppy’s helicopter and ran into the store, desperate, saying, ‘I need to get out! I have a baby!’, so I told her people have been having babies here for 150 years and survived,” Elaine grins.

As in Elaine style: “You just do what you’ve got to do and get on with it.”