Fran O’Connor - Fran just can - Overcoming the odds

She’s full of life and laughs – a caring, compassionate heart on legs, legs that travel around this district helping others at a fair rate of knots.

But life for Fran O’Connor hasn’t always been filled with the joy and love that she spreads elsewhere.

At 75, Fran may have recently had a pacemaker implanted but it doesn’t seem to have slowed her down. She’s still heavily involved in volunteer work locally from team leader and driver for the free St John Health Shuttle to uprooting menacing wilding pines.

In 2012 she was honoured for some of her endeavours, winning the Spirit of Queenstown Award and jointly winning the DOC Inland Otago Award. She’s also been Central Otago St John team leader and last year was awarded a Member of St John medal. She drives for Senior Citizens and Age Concern and works tirelessly as part of the local Historical Society.

In her early days in Queenstown Fran would “roar up Queenstown Hill” in her little car, taking to the wilding pines. “It grew and grew, and we had a meeting with six of us, but then around 2010 the Conifer Control Group was formed,” she says. She’d rope in local school groups to help, teaching environmental awareness at the same time.

Fran’s always had a way of getting the message across, despite no formal teacher training.

She’s been an adult tutor for students who failed high school in Westport, becoming highly trained at teaching Commerce and English. “I taught in an alternative way, teaching them by Word Finder and Pictionary. They’d been told they’d never read or write but they all passed,” she says, proudly. Then living in Invercargill, prior to moving to Queenstown, Fran walked straight into a tutoring job at Southland Academy without even requiring an interview.

It’s all pretty impressive for someone who was made to leave home at 16 with no reason why.
Born in Wellington, the family moved to Hamilton and Whangarei.

Fran became a herd tester on a dairy farm, marrying a dairy farm worker at 21. About six months before her wedding, she narrowly escaped death when a milk tanker hurtled through an intersection and hit her Mini, which landed in a paddock half a kilometre away facing the opposite direction. “I was in hospital for three months and underwent multiple surgery. They told me I wouldn’t walk again, but I said, ‘Watch this space’,” Fran says, defiantly. “That really shaped my life and made me who I am today. You either give up or face it head on and win.”

Forever a battler, Fran narrowly escaped death again last month (May) after a ‘heart block’, helicoptered to Dunedin Hospital. “Once again, here I am,” she grins.

After her first marriage ended in 1978, Fran, 28, left the Palmerston North farm heading south with her three daughters, the youngest only two weeks.

Westport seemed like a safe bet to bring up her girls and Fran helped set up the local I-Site Centre and the Citizens Advice Bureau.

In the early 90s she and her youngest two travelled around New Zealand in a van, the kids doing Correspondence School. They settled in Rotorua for three years where Fran helped run a motor camp single-handedly, living in a caravan with the girls.

“I’d had to run a dairy farm on my own,” she says. These challenges have enabled her to empathise with others who’ve been through the same thing.

“The hot water grid went through the compressor, and I bled it one day and turned it right off. You should’ve heard the noise!!” she laughs.

After short stints in Christchurch then Invercargill they moved to Queenstown where Fran worked driving 20-seater buses between Invercargill and Queenstown. She then walked into another job not requiring an interview, this time as guide-4WD driver for Nomad Safaris, her gutsy manner and jolly demeanour a winner with the tourists.

Taking a load of wide-eyed passengers in convoy into the likes of Sefferstown and Macetown, Fran drove over an ice shelf with chains on once and it broke. “The tourists loved it when things went wrong. I got them all on one side of the vehicle to lift it.”

A quad bike guide too, Fran got some odd looks at times. “I’d be leaning against the shed with my grey hair in my 50s and young Aussie guys would turn up for their trip and look at me dubiously. They apologised afterwards.”

She also drove for Mount Nicholas Farm Tours, all loads of fun.

Fran lived in a caravan at the Arrowtown Camping Ground for six years, also living with her daughters locally at times. She knows the local housing crisis only too well but in 2021 pure joy came when she was offered one of the Community Housing Trust’s Toru Apartments. For the first time I got a brand-new fridge of my own,” she says, beaming proudly. “I love it here.”