Mary Butler - Safe Delivery

She helped deliver hundreds of babies in almost 15 years as a midwife, starting at the old Sydney Street Queenstown Maternity Home, (later Bungi Backpackers), during the boom times of the 1980s and 90s, up to eight mums often packed into the five-bed home.

It was hard work with plenty of ‘on call’ nights and despite being a single mum with two young boys for much of that time, Mary Butler says they were the best years of her midwifery career.

“That old maternity home was the love of my life. Maureen (Smith) cooked porridge and bran muffins every morning, ensuring no constipation,” Mary says. “We converted the nurses’ quarters out the back for Friday night family fish and chip nights with husbands and kids joining the mums. The night before they went home, usually after seven days, we’d babysit, allowing the women a night out with their husband.”

It was a bustling place – mums from Glenorchy, Wānaka, Hawea and Cromwell all delivering there too. “They’d sit around the kitchen table and swap stories, mums of three telling the newcomers how it was done.

“It was a fantastic core community then. If we needed bloods done, they’d go to Invercargill on the Southland Times van or the Northern Southland truck.”

There were many hair-raising trips to Five Rivers or Lumsden to meet the Invercargill ambulance, or on to Invercargill, with St John’s Owen Genty-Nott at the wheel – no helicopters allowed then. Around 30% of women transferred prior to, or during birth for various reasons.

They were rushed off their feet during the 1980s baby boom.

“We were always full. There were seldom no mothers.”

“But Invercargill (Southland Hospital Board) left us alone. The board came for morning tea and Maureen baked them pikelets. They’d talk nonsense, go away and say they’d had a meeting.”

That was to change.

The midwives found out about homeopathy in the 1980s, buying Arnica and Rescue Remedy themselves to help mothers recover from birth trauma and bruising. “The Hospital Board found out and made us, and the patients, sign a disclaimer as they weren’t having any part of this witchery in their hospital,” Mary grins.

She became passionate about women’s health, organising discussion groups and volunteering on the Wakatipu Family Health Committee, and meeting with the Health Ministry in Dunedin about law changes allowing full midwifery independence.

Together with Plunket nurse Kath Archibald also Karitane nurse Ann Pinckney, Mary helped organise support groups and they taught everything from breastfeeding to infant resuscitation.

She gave up her days off to babysit at Plunket while new mums, who had no extended family here, took some kip in the flat upstairs. She’d also do antenatal visits and counselling, working with jealous preschool siblings.

Much of this after becoming a single mum, three local schoolkids, including Marueen’s son Craig Smith, taking over afterschool care as teens.

Mary had completed her midwifery training at Sydney Hospital in 1977, she and ex-husband Grant living there for six years from 1976.

She’d worked in the UK for three years, taking the usual Contiki European camping trip in 1971 and hitching around the Greek Islands, before marrying back in NZ in 1972, then more travel.

While interviewing for her first midwifery job in Jamaica the matron had warned Mary to “get under the desk” as the ambulance officer and a nurse were having a massive fight! At the second hospital the matron said, ‘Don’t you think you’re getting any special privileges because you’re white.’ So, she relief taught sex education in Jamaican schools.

She’d always had her eye on Queenstown, buying a section in now prime Mincher Road, Kelvin Heights, in 1977 for $12,500.

One of five kids from Dunedin, later Nelson, Mary’s mum had dropped her purse filled with cash for the family’s May holiday off the Queenstown town pier into the eel-infested lake in 1953 – her earliest local memory. “She was trying to grab me from going over the side. Dad had to retrieve it!”

After Nelson College for Girls, she was lured back to student city Dunedin where she did her nursing training.

“That was a highlight – the start of the 1960s social revolution, rock ‘n’ roll and The Beatles.” The Nurses’ Home rules were very strict, the sisters roaming the corridors. “We’d frequent the fire escape.”

“Male visitors were forbidden to cross a line marked on the lino downstairs and visitors had their name read over the loudspeaker.”

In 1993 she and midwife Val Wilson started Wakatipu Independent Midwives – the first move towards the current lead maternity caregiver’s system, still hospital registered nurses but working part-time for themselves. It was a brave move that drew flak.

Mary was an instigator in securing the site and buildings for the Frankton Playcentre, volunteering regularly for Scouts, Senior Citizens and the Wakatipu High PTA.

She completed a BA from 1987 to 1997, then in 1998 married Christchurch periodontist and old flame Dick Jefferies forming a blended family of seven kids, moving there for 17 years. She worked at a Christchurch Hospital day clinic, before they moved back to Queenstown in 2016.

Mary volunteered at Lakes District Hospital ED through FEDS until major heart surgery and multiple strokes almost took her life in 2023. “That’s really curbed my independence,” she says.