‘Aunty Belle’ 100

Press, 28 November 1983, Page 1

‘Aunty Belle’ 100

By

KAY FORRESTER

Birthdays are nothing special for Mrs Bella McElligott, who will celebrate her hundredth today.

The former Kawarau Gorge resident, who now lives in Christchurch with her niece, dismisses her reaching a century — “I don’t think about it. It’s nothing really. I just live from day to day.”

Asked what she remembered most about the last 100 years, Mrs McElligott shakes her head: “So much has happened I couldn’t tell you,” she said.

A life member of the Labour Party, “Aunty Belle,” as she is known, has always voted Labour. She was secretary of the Cromwell branch of the party for 10 years and one of her proudest possessions is the gold-plated long service badge presented to her in 1972 by the then Prime Minister, Mr Norman Kirk. Mr Kirk visited her again a year later in Cromwell to fulfil a promise made to attend her ninetieth birthday party. Mrs McEliigott recalls the days when Bob Semple and Michael Savage were in the Labour Party. “If Mickey Savage hadn’t been elected in 1935 you wouldn’t be coming round here to talk to me. You’d be in the streets with a shovel cleaning the gutter,” she said.

“When Mickey Savage got in, wages were 30 shillings a week. That is what my husband and I had to live on, and then they took a shilling in tax.” Although she listens to Parliament on the radio, Mrs McEliigott does not think as highly of today’s politicians as she did of their predecessors. She is not keen on either the Labour Party leader, Mr Lange, or the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon. However, she is emphatic she will always vote Labour. Two other badges worn as proudly as the Labour longservice badge (only the fifth to be given) represent Mrs McElligott’s other life-time interests, the Country Women’s Institute and bowls.

She was still playing bowls in Cromwell when she was 80, and is still an active member of the institute.

Born in Kawarau Gorge on November 28, 1883, Mrs McElligott lived in that area until five years ago. Her home was a pioneer cottage with sod walls, converted from stables that used to serve the Sluicers Arms Hotel, which was built in 1880. She left Cromwell in 1978 to live with her niece and nephew-in-law, Gay and Keith Truman, in St Albans. Although the move was difficult to make at the time, Mrs McElligott says she could not be more comfortable. She still does her own shopping and, apart from being deaf and not able to walk the distances she used to, is fit and well. A check at the doctor’s last week gave her a clean bill of health.

“He said there’s nothing wrong with me,” she said. Because of her knowledge of the Kawarau Gorge and Central Otago, Mrs McElligott occasionally gets inquiries from people wanting to know more about the area’s history. One inquiry about the Post Office at Kawarau prompted a fivepage letter full of details in reply. Mrs McElligott, who married when she was 49, has survived her husband. They had no children. Four generations of the family will gather today to celebrate her birthday, and two long-time friends have travelled from Canada and Australia especially to wish Mrs McElligott a happy birthday. Mrs McElligott insists that she wants no fuss. Asked if she had any ambitions unfulfilled after 100 years she said she would like to visit the West Coast. “I’ve lived or been everywhere else in New Zealand but I haven’t been to Westport or Greymouth,” she said.