Ex-coal mine owner celebrating 101st

Former Nightcaps resident Dot Brazier, who is turning 101 today. She is pictured here at age 95...
Former Nightcaps resident Dot Brazier, who is turning 101 today. She is pictured here at age 95 with her grandson Kerry Brazier on his Harley Davidson. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
A former Nightcaps mine owner and bus driver will celebrate her 101st birthday in Auckland today.

Dot Brazier (nee Earley) was born on September 8, 1921, and with her husband Bill owned the Nightcaps coal mine from 1951-55.

The couple were married in 1942. The couple also owned and ran the school bus around Nightcaps for many years.

The couple had three children, Gaynor, Lance and Royce, and also took in Neville, after Neville’s mother died from tuberculosis.

She has 14 grandchildren and a number of great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

Gaynor (78) said her mother would be having birthday celebrations this weekend with family and friends visiting from the South Island, including a former pupil she used to drive to school in the school bus.

Although she has been experiencing degrading eyesight and hearing in recent years, her mother still loved to laugh and walking down memory lane was one of her favourite things to do.

"She said the other day, ‘I was just thinking’ ... ‘those kids, they were great kids. Well-behaved, always polite’. One day, one of them says ‘Mrs Brazier, Mrs Brazier, please, please stop the bus!’ And she thought, oh my goodness. She stopped the bus and two boys jumped off and jumped a fence — and a cow was giving birth and it was having trouble. So they helped the cow and then hopped back in."

Raised in Dunedin, she left school at 13 and later worked at Wolfenden & Russell clothing store in South Dunedin, where she made soldiers’ uniforms at the Sargoods clothing factory during the war.

For a time she also worked at Cadbury Fry Hudson, packing hand-wrapped chocolates and also served as leader of the Cadbury marching team.

The Braziers returned to Dunedin after retiring in 1986, although Mr Brazier died that same year.

Mrs Brazier stayed in Dunedin until she had a heart attack in 2015 and moved to Auckland to be closer to her children. She now lives at the Howick Baptist Health Care Centre.

Ben Tomsett

 

 

 

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