Elaine Wells - Care queen

She does a mean Southland cheese roll, but retired nurse Elaine Wells is probably best known locally for her compassionate heart and pitching in in the community wherever she can to get the job done.

Elaine’s definitely endured her own tough times but has turned that around to caring for others, working for both Presbyterian Support Otago and Presbyterian Support Southland locally, and also as a Cancer Society nurse and volunteer.

Now 80, she only gave up her voluntary work for the Society six years ago, present for every fundraiser and event.

“I just like helping people. I just do whatever I can do.”

Prior to that she’d worked as a respite nurse for families.

There have been some very moving stories and while it can be extremely hard, Elaine says she does her best to be as uplifting and positive as possible for patients and their families.

A bridge player for almost 50 years in her patch of Otapiri in Southland, and for the past 30 years in Queenstown, Elaine’s not one to boast: “I do have the odd good result,” she says. “Playing bridge is my out. It has been ever since my three boys were little.”

These days it’s just Meals on Wheels – something Elaine’s volunteered for locally for almost 20 years. Meal recipients are always very grateful, but one elderly person once told fellow retired volunteer Graeme Finnie: ‘I should be delivering these to you!’ to the amusement of the team.

And these days it’s not just her grandchildren who are huge fans of Grandma’s veggie soup and prize Southland cheese rolls. They’ve gone down a treat with the odd tradie stopping by her Frankton home too.

Hospitality and helping others just comes naturally to Elaine, born into a large extended Southland farming family in 1946.

Her parents farmed her father’s family property at Boggyburn, near Winton, Elaine the eldest of three girls learning in the home kitchen from the best – her mother.

“Mum was one of nine and Dad of six. He, four of my uncles and my cousin all came back safely after World War II,” she says. “We grew up with a huge group of cousins within a 50-mile radius, all congregating at my grandparents’ Winton home on Friday nights.”

Elaine’s earliest memories are riding around the sheep in a jogger behind the horses with her dad.

Boarding in Invercargill’s Lorn Street during her years at Southland Girls’ High, Elaine endured hail, wind and rain biking to school, including home to the landlady for lunch. Tennis was her thing back then, Elaine on the Otapiri Tennis Club committee while at high school.

She left school at 17 starting her nursing training at Kew Hospital in 1964. If the nurses had a male visitor at the front door it was public information for all to know. “Their name was read out over an intercom calling them down to meet him at the Nurse’s Home office.”

There were the usual late-night assistances getting friends back in the window after hours and nobody dared put a foot wrong on the matron’s ward. “Too bad if you didn’t scrub the bedpans properly, but the sheets and pillows had to be so straight and neatly presented twice a day for visiting hours,” she grins.

Matron drove a tight ship.

“One night duty I was walking through the covered way and greeted by a naked figure beckoning me over, one of the dear old souls. It was freezing!”

Husband of 43 years, Bill, who passed away in 2011, was introduced through Elaine’s cousin and when she was 21 they married in February 1967, Bill working on Elaine’s parents’ farm while they raised their children.

Elaine returned to nursing at Winton Medical Centre and was then in geriatrics for nine years at Invercargill’s Lorne Hospital.

Sadly, both Elaine’s parents passed away young, and she and Bill took over her parents’ family farm at Boggyburn in 1971, there until 1995. During that time Elaine was heavily involved in the local Women’s Division of Federated Farmers, cubs and scouts, the school PTA and the bridge club.

She’s been very involved with the Save The Children Fund in both Southland and the Wakatipu, once again her compassionate heart moving her to fundraising action.

The Wells built a holiday home in Kelvin Heights in 1973 paying just $10,000 for a lakefront section on Peninsula Road, later building another Kelvin Heights home near Bay View after moving to Queenstown permanently in 1995.

They then bought The Veggie Patch – a Frankton market garden where Bunnings is now. “One year I remember Bill had too many cauliflowers at once so he sold them off small for 50 cents each and a woman from Auckland stopped by and said he should be selling them for $3 or $4,” Elaine grins.

Elaine believes in keeping the brain active and she was on the inaugural committee that founded Queenstown’s U3A group in 2010 – hugely popular, especially with retired people.

Walking and gardening are her thing now… and the grandchildren have plenty of orders for Grandma’s soup, cheese rolls, Christmas truffles and homemade chocolates too.