Queenstowner Eva Boyer’s recent 90th birthday literally “started with a bang”.

The day prior, Eva was woken about 6.45am by what she thought was thunder and lightning, “because my whole bedroom was lighting up”.

But when she looked out the front door of her Queenstown Country Club home, her garden was “just like fireworks”, courtesy of an electrical fault.

“It was quite major — people were running everywhere.”

Forty-odd years earlier, she’d experienced a different kind of house fire in Queenstown.

She and her late husband, Bill, purchased a holiday home in Frankton Rd in the late 1970s and some years later when she and daughter Karen Boult, Queenstown’s former mayoress, were in Auckland, Karen’s husband Jim called, informing her “your parents’ house is on fire”.

“I got quite excited because I thought, ‘we’ll get the insurance’,” Eva laughs.

“I rang up Bill and I said, ‘the house is on fire’.

“He said, ‘oh, I know, I told the fire brigade they could use it as a training exercise’.”

Of Ngāi Tahu descent — kaumatua Michael Skerrett is her first cousin — Eva was the ninth, and last, child welcomed by her parents, George and Lylla Skerrett.

Her mother didn’t have a washing machine, or fridge, until after Eva married.

She spent her early years on her parents’ farm at Pahi, an early Māori village near Riverton, before shifting to another farm at Oteramika when she was about four, then later moving to Invercargill when she was about nine.

The talented singer attended St George School, Tweedsmuir Intermediate and Southland Girls’ High, after which she started working in the office of mercantile firm, J.G. Ward and Co — its legacy eventually traces into PGG Wrightson.

Eva then became front office manager at Invercargill’s Shell Oil Company, but a chance encounter at a party when she was about 18 changed the course of her life.

“I was quite young, and I was not supposed to go to a party, which I did go to.

“And I met Bill there.

“I hadn’t really talked to him at the party, but he rang me during the week.

“He took me to the Mercantile Ball, and then there was a series of balls after that, and I was with him forever.”

The couple married before Eva’s 20th birthday and were together more than 50 years, welcoming children Peter, now living in Auckland, Karen and Rick, who lives in Bali.

“I think you’re very lucky if you meet somebody that you really care about, and that you can get on and relate to for the rest of your life.

“I had a great marriage, I really did.

“He was the best husband, and we just got on really well together.”

Eva stayed home to raise the children, but when they went to school “I was bored”, so she got an office job with Andrew Housing, a company who built houses for people who “capitalised on their family benefit”.

“We had, I think, about 20 basic plans and I used to redraw the plans to suit the people.”

Then, in the late ‘70s, Eva bought Chloe, a Windsor St fashion store.

She eventually sold that in the early ‘90s after Bill — who had Southern Motor Dealers in Invercargill and Christchurch — had a massive stroke in 1989 when he was about 56.

Paralysed down his left side, they ultimately relocated to Christchurch where there was better care, while Eva went on to nurse him for 22 years.

Bill later developed diabetes and had coeliac disease — “[it was] quite hard to cook for him” — along with some heart problems.

“But he was great, he never complained, ever.”

In Christchurch, Eva started volunteering at Christchurch International Airport’s international and domestic help desks.

“I loved that job,” she says.

She recalls one “very nervous” woman, waiting to meet a man she’d met online, approaching the help desk.

“Oh my god, he was such a disappointment,” Eva says.

“And I thought, ‘I don’t know if she’s going to be very happy with that’.”

The couple were living in Papanui Rd when the devastating February 22 earthquake hit in 2011 — “it was a terrible experience” — and just four months later Bill died, aged 78.

The following year Eva returned to Queenstown, initially living in Frankton before becoming one of the first residents at the Queenstown Country Club eight years ago.

In between times, at the suggestion of local Jill Wikstrom, Eva heeded a call in Mountain Scene to volunteer at Remarkables Park’s CanShop.

Twelve years on, and with her driver’s licence secured for another two years, she still spends three days a week there, helping out, though she reckons she might cut back to just two days a week, soon.

She’s also still involved in Ngāi Tahu’s Waitutu Trust, which manages ancestral blocks of land near the Fiordland National Park.

Boasting one of the busiest social calendars at the country club, Eva believes it’s important to keep busy.

“I think you’ve got to get out and be a bit social and try do do something with your life.”

She draws the line at joining the country club’s ukelele group, though, and also has no interest in playing bridge.

“I’ve learnt to play bridge … hated it.

“It was quite fun learning, but then when you start playing bridge, everybody’s so serious.”

Eva rang in her 90th birthday with a lively bash at the country club, attended by friends and family who’d travelled from all over to be with her.

“I said, ‘well, I want to have this party, because otherwise you’re going to have a big party when I die and I won’t be there.

“And you want to be at your own party.”

tracey.roxburgh@scene.co.nz