‘Happy-hearted’ Fae’s big milestone

• Published date: 28 March 2024
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

For a start, there’s her longevity as a travel consultant

She started, aged 15, in 1958 — two years before TV arrived in New Zealand — and, though she’s had some years away, is only retiring next month, 66 years on.

Fae’s also had many community roles, like with Showbiz Queenstown since the mid-’70s, Victim Support for the past 31 years, training public speaking, taking weddings and funerals, and assuming ministry and other roles in the Catholic church — even serving as international secretary for the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations.

For the past five years she’s also suffered a bad right eye that was finally taken out last month — ironically, her employer is the isite visitor centre.

Raised in Invercargill, Fae moved to Queenstown in 1957 — population 600-700 — when her stepdad Owen Lockhart got a joinery job here.

Having been used to a convent education, she found the district high school ‘‘extremely rough’’, and...