An interest in people and places and the way they interact has been growing in Wendy Pettigrew since she was a schoolgirl.
Now the chairwoman and founder of the Whanganui Regional Heritage Trust, and a member of the Mainstreet design heritage committee and earthquake prone buildings taskforce, she has been awarded a Queen's Service Medal (QSM) for services to heritage preservation.
All her work in Wanganui for the past 15 years has been voluntary and it has been on many fronts.
People who have worked alongside her can attest to her energy, ideas and high standards.
Ms Pettigrew did her secondary schooling at Wanganui Girls' College, then a year at Victoria University.
Because New Zealand in the 1960s was so male oriented and conservative, she left for England in 1966.
She did a year at a secretarial school there, then went to the United States to work as a nanny and stayed for seven years.
In San Francisco she got a secretarial job with the Sierra Club, an environmental organisation.
She describes it as a "eureka" moment.
"That was when I got into conservation and found I got on well with people who shared those views."
She worked her way up to information officer, then went back to England in 1976 and worked for the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. Her next job, in 1984, was for the Countryside Commission, a government agency looking after landscape and outdoor recreation. She became a senior officer in the Bristol area.
By 1997, she was ready to return to Wanganui, where her father lived.
She took early retirement and had enough money to buy a freehold house.
"I had worked my butt off for the British Government and they are paying for it for the rest of my life," she said.
Ms Pettigrew became a voluntary finance director for Age Concern, fundraising for their present building.
She got involved with the city's genealogy group and took on heritage research work for Wanganui District Council.
That resulted in an extra 48 buildings being added to the 2009 District Plan. She received the New Zealand Institute of Architects President's Award in 2010 for her work.
She has helped organise the Whanganui Summer Programme since 2008 and supervised the restoration of St Mary's Church in Upokongaro, writing its history.
Ms Pettigrew joined the New Zealand Historic Places Trust Whanganui branch committee in 2003 and led trips to historic sites and buildings.
After Craig Mills died, she became its secretary. In 2010, she resigned and set up the Whanganui Regional Heritage Trust to take over its work.
She would now like the trust to have its own office and more volunteers. She does her heritage work most days, but not all day and never in the evenings, and she said she had a lot left to do. Convening the region's World War I commemorations is one of those things and it will be ongoing for the next five years.
"I think if I hadn't been there, it wouldn't be happening."
Then there is the information lodged in her head.
"I have got a lot of information to share with other people. I've just got to work out how to do it."