FAR FROM MEDIOCRE: Heather McKechnie at Whakarewarewa. PHOTO/BEN FRASER
A three week total immersion course in te reo was Heather McKechnie's ticket out of Auckland.
She tossed in a perfectly good job that came with a house and headed to Rotorua, her teenage son chaperoning.
It was a place she knew well and with which she had strong family links. Her mother was Whakarewarewa raised, Heather spent school holidays there staying with her "Nanni", Guide Hannah, one of a long line of Hunt women to take visitors through the thermal valley.
Heather traces her maternal whakapapa (genealogy) back to a many times great grandmother, one of Hongi Hika's Arawa wives "stolen" in his 1823 Mokoia Island raid.
Other forebears settled at Te Wairoa, moving to Whakarewarewa after Tarawera's 1886 eruption obliterated their pa.
All this comes as a surprise to Our People. We thought we knew Heather reasonably well but hadn't a clue she was of Maori heritage so what better reason to explore her background?
That we should want to catches her on the hop. "Mine's been a pretty mediocre kind of life," she parries. We doubt if readers will agree.
Heather's done a heck of a lot in her time, including being partner to Rotorua's revered historian, Don Stafford, for the final 15 years of his life; to her he'll always be "the Don".
Heather had been drawn to him long before they met. An avid reader of Maori history, she was entranced when she stumbled on his Te Arawa - A History of the Te Arawa People in the Henderson library.
"It was so special to me reading about my mother's people, my people. I used to look at his photo on the fly leaf and think he looked such an English gentleman, I often used to quote DS Stafford."
To keep her life in a reasonably orderly sequence we'll save their meeting until further forward.
Heather's growing up years were spent in an Auckland state house. At 15 she became apprenticed to high-end fashion designer, Emma Knuckey.
"Her clothes were exclusive, I was making these fabulous, draped gowns . . . all very glamorous."
Heather had sewn for as long as she can remember. "My mother had a passion for clothes, as the first of three daughters out of the hatchery I was the one to sew for her."
At 20, she married Peter Smith, a "keeping it in the family" union; he was her aunt's stepson.
Their 11-year marriage produced two sons, and two whangai (adopted) children, a son was from within the family and an Indian girl who came to them aged 11 "when Campbell [her son] brought her home from school".
Home was a Kaukapakapa lifestyle block "where I baked our own bread."
When the couple parted Heather returned to Auckland "because I was worried my kids weren't street smart".
She took a job as Henderson High's administrator "then when Tomorrow's Schools became 'today's schools' it seemed to me sight was lost of what was important to students."
She took annual leave and joined that total immersion te reo course that was to return her to her Rotorua roots.
"It was wonderful, if you couldn't say something in Maori you didn't speak; it gave me a real shift of consciousness . . . I didn't want to be in Auckland any more."
It was her children who pointed her towards Rotorua. "My oldest son turned up the next day with everything in a big chest and said 'I'm coming with you', that was that."
When they arrived Rotorua had the country's highest unemployment rate but both were soon working, Heather as a Waimaungu tour guide.
"I loved it, talking about that beautiful place and bossing people around, it was right up my alley."
Regardless, four years on it was time for a change. "I love gardening so went to Waiariki graduating two years later with a certificate in horticulture."
Heather would still be gardening if her heart hadn't decreed otherwise. "One day I was cutting a hedge and simply couldn't go on, the doctor said I had an enlarged heart, it's genetic I can trace it back five female generations. It got to the stage where I couldn't lift my arms to brush my hair, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when a girlfriend said 'get educated, get on the computer'."
She obeyed, learning it was possible to treat her condition by injecting ethanol into the body.
"I told my surgeon I wanted to try it, he was over the moon he'd studied the procedure in the US but only done it a couple of times. I can't believe how lucky I was, within a couple of months I could wash my hair, climb stairs."
Now to return to her meeting with "the Don".
"A friend gave me one of his books, we were in a coffee bar, he walked past tipping his hat to everyone, we left our coffee and bags and ran after him to introduce ourselves."
Heather attended several of his talks, including one at Kiwi Ranch, shortly after his wife Nan's death.
"I offered him my condolences, some time later I offered him my friendship, he couldn't cook, I started to cook for him, that's how it began, it's quite romantic really, I was blessed to have him."
Before and since Don's death Heather's juggled jobs as community co-ordinator for Progress Ngongotaha and parish council administrator for St Barnabas' church, retiring this year.
"I feel like someone left the gates open, there's so much new to do."
HEATHER McKECHNIE
Born: Auckland, 1945.
Education: Tamaki Primary and Intermediate (foundation pupil at both), Tamaki High.
Family: Three sons, one daughter, one grandson, one granddaughter.
Interests: Family, Citizens Advice Bureau, Progress Ngongotaha, Curtain Bank, gardening, doll making, quilting, patchwork, reading "I read anything", Zumba, yoga, "line dancing's next".
Personal Philosophy: "You have to believe it will be alright in the end, if it's not alright it's not the end."