Gillian Macleod - In safe hands

A Queenstown architect for almost 50 years and Queenstown Lakes District councillor for nine, Gillian Macleod also juggled motherhood - four kids, and multiple voluntary roles, amid the many meetings.

Now 70, she was not only very involved with Frankton Playcentre, school PTAs and the Environmental Defence Society back in the day, but also the Wakatipu Yacht Club and Ski Club, and, out of necessity, the local babysitting club. Busy mums took turns sitting each other’s kids.

Passionate about preserving architectural treasures, Gillian also founded the Wakatipu Heritage Trust.

She’s never been afraid to take on a new challenge, arriving in Queenstown alone at 21, already a well-travelled Auckland architecture graduate.

“When I was 13 Dad took the family on a trip around the world in a campervan, an amazing education,” she says.

It was 1969 and in Iran the entire family was escorted to their hotel by Police and told to “put our clothes on”. “Us girls were in miniskirts and the boys in shorts. We had a whole mob following us and we didn’t know why,” she grins. They were in New York for the mass tickertape parade the day the first astronauts landed on the moon.

School holidays were spent plugging screeds of numbers into paper spreadsheets using an old calculator while her engineer dad was designing a new Auckland public transport system proposed by then mayor Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson.

“I think that’s where my love of urban design was born,” Gillian, who returned to Auckland Uni while still Mum to a teenager, says. She completed a Masters in Urban Design with First Class Honours.

A graduate of Auckland’s Epsom Girls’ Grammar, Gillian earned an ‘A’ Bursary at just 16 heading to uni to study architecture. “I’d always loved art and drawing.”

Part way through she took a year off for an exchange to Germany where her very liberal Lutheran host father divided his stipend, giving his six kids and Gillian 100 Deutschmark each and sending them off alone. “I was 18 and hitched to Amsterdam with the two 13-year-olds,” she says. “Everybody in the family smoked, including the 8-year-old, so I did too, but when my mother came to pick me up at the airport with my roll-your-owns, she threatened to take me to a hostel, so I threw them out the window,” Gillian laughs.

She had travelled extensively that year but returned to complete her degree, graduating top of the Auckland School of Architecture and her 70-strong class, just eight who were women then.

Arriving in Queenstown to work for John Blair at 21 in the late 70s, Gillian met electrician husband of 42 years Roger Norton at Eichardt’s Pub. “He was looking for a flat and I said he could join mine if he brought a stereo. He built two huge Ferro cement speakers. It took two people to carry them in!” Roger also rewired her cold, tiny Panorama Terrace house that only had one electric socket. “I thought, ‘Here’s a man who will make things I only dream of, and on time for me, so I married him,” she grins.

At 26 Gillian launched her own practice, seeking out good tradespeople and new materials the hard way without the internet. She helped found the local Design Practice Support Group, which she was involved with for over 20 years.

“Designing 10 houses a year was the norm back then. Now it’s two. They were much simpler. Ensuites were virtually unheard of then.”

After time overseas together, eldest son Hugo was on the way and they built a home at Sunshine Bay – Gillian designing, Roger building.

As mum of three by the 1990s, Gillian went into practice in Bathhouse Studios with local heritage architect Jackie Gillies who’d saved the historic lakefront Bathhouse which they refurbished.

They both fell pregnant so Gillian, sure she’d never find a nanny for four, quit the practice but always had something ticking over on the drawing board.

In 2001 she was invited to a community meeting at actor Sam Neill’s house where a group of residents, concerned about the extent at which the council was carving up rural land for housing, urged her to stand for election.

She was the highest polling councillor that year – 2001, leaving some satisfying accomplishments as her legacy – her greatest joy being a founding member of Queenstown Trails Trust. “The council wanted to sell off all the disused paper roads after pressure from landowners,” she says.

Saving the One Mile Powerhouse from demolition was another coup and as the chair of strategy and planning for five years, she helped drive a suggestion that the Jack’s Point landowners fund an affordable housing trust.

Gillian was also a strong advocate for a community swimming pool, driving the Aquatic Centre project with Rick Pettit and Christine Kelly, sent on a national tour of successful pool complexes.

The postgrad study was next, leaving youngest Jonty to survive on Roger’s mince and peas for 10 months. “I now use that urban design qualification to write to the council,” she grins.

Her swansong was their middle son’s home, which Roger helped build.

An active member of the Green Party locally, retirement has given Gillian time to pursue her passion for the environment.

“My blood pressure’s returned to normal now that I’m not responsible for other people’s money,” she smiles.