Small communities are peppered with hidden heroes, people who beaver away in the background generally unnoticed but providing essential community service.

Diane Ridley is one of those hidden heroes.

Most people in the Te Anau basin will have come across Mrs Ridley as a nurse at the Fiordland Medical Centre, but what most won’t know is that, besides continuously taking care of patients in the area since 1969, she has been one of the strongest advocates for the region with a 26-year stint in local body government.

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Now recently retired from active service, she has been part of the fabric of Te Anau’s history for more that 50 years.

Mrs Ridley recently took some time to reflect on her retirement and to look at the way the small rural and tourist outpost has grown and changed during her watch.

There have been more than 20 doctors over the years who have worked at the Medical Centre since Doctor John Moore, Te Anau’s first resident doctor, and she is the only nurse to have worked with them all.

She recalled the names of some of the doctors from the 1970’s who helped establish the foundation for the current Fiordland Centre including Charlie Baycroft, Piet van Dyk, Trevor Walker and Patrick O’Sullivan – men she said who chose to work in a very different type of general practice, which meant they could at any moment be called to road or farming or aircraft accidents, or climbing accidents or to a fishing boat out on the Fiordland coast, or turn their hand to delivering a baby or two when they decided come early.

Fiordland Medical staff dressed up for the centennial in 1983 (from left) Margaret Hall (West in those days) Agnes Moir, Jo Walker, Diane Ridley, Linda Matheson. PHOTO: Supplied

The search and rescue aspect of the practice meant Mrs Ridley was often required to attend emergencies during the 1970s and 1980s, usually being ferried by helicopter and she remembered her first outing. It was with Doctor Baycroft and helicopter pilot the late Bill Black.

She said the weather came in and they were forced to land on the McKinnon Pass until they could continue safely. 

“Bill Black just sat there puffing on his pipe looking very calm… but what I didn’t know was that the doctor and the pilot had had a private conversation outlining the precarious situation they were in.”

“Happily, it all turned out okay for us all but I never knew the danger we were in.”

Mrs Ridley and husband Doug left Te Anau in 1970 for five years to travel and work in South Africa and Perth, Australia.

Mr Ridley, a mechanic, initially worked at Russel McIvor Tractor and Motor services and later the couple built and operated Mararoa Motors on Luxmore Drive in 1988 which they sold in 1998. Mr Ridley then started a marine service business that he recently sold, the day before his 74th birthday.

The Ridley family began expanding with son Matthew arriving as a two-week-old baby in 1978 followed soon after by daughter Yvette in 1980.

Mrs Ridley said she had chosen parenthood and intended to be a stay-at-home mother, however the resident doctors at that time, Walker and van Dyk, convinced her to return to work by allowing the babies to accompany her to the workplace.

“Trevor told me this is a family practice.”

In the early days of the medical practice Mrs Ridley was in charge of taking all the daytime emergency ambulance calls and she was one of only two trained in Cardiac Respiratory Resuscitation (CPR). She recalled a dinner she hosted at her home for the medical centre staff and got an emergency cardiac callout during the dinner.

“I was the one on call so had to go and by the time I got home the others were just leaving after having had a lovely time in my absence.”

She became involved in various aspects of the small community including the Fiordland Volunteer Ambulance Service (FVAS), which has since morphed into St John Ambulance.

The local community funded and staffed the FVAS including the building and all the assets and fought hard to retain local ownership.

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Mrs Ridley began becoming involved with local governance roles with an appointment on the last Board of Governors at Fiordland College before the ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ changes brought in new governance and management at all New Zealand schools.

She continued her interest on the newly formed Board of Trustees at the college.

From 1986 she spent the next 26 years representing and advocating for the Te Anau region in local body government roles.

She was elected to the then Te Anau Community Council (now Te Anau Community Board) followed by election to the then Wallace County Council (now the Te Anau ward of the Southland District Council (SDC) following amalgamation of the southern district’s county councils) where she was just the second woman to be elected.

Mrs Ridley and former SDC Mayor, the late Frana Cardno, became very well known as a formidable pair within local body governance bodies. The pair often travelled together to various events, with Mrs Ridley acting as chauffeur while Mrs Cardno would catch up on her required reading.

The reading was one of the biggest requirements of the job.

Screeds of reports meant most free time was taken up with reading and “I can honestly say I never went into a meeting unprepared… you have to otherwise how do you know what you’re talking about?”.  

“You owe it to the applicants and submitters to read the papers thoroughly.”

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Mrs Ridley said Te Anau’s growth was seriously impeded by a lack of residential sections. The available land owned by central government was not released for residential development until the SDC got assistance from Derek Angus, National Member of Parliament for Wallace, who assisted the council in negotiating the sale and purchase of what became the Luxmore Subdivision on the north side of Luxmore Drive.

Through her position on the SCD, Mrs Ridley was variously appointed to the Southland Conservation Board, Destination Fiordland Board and Venture Southland.

Her role on Venture Southland meant an appointment to the Milford Sound Community Trust.

“I’ve seen more reports on what should happen at Milford Sound (than you could count) but what happens? Nothing. I would like to see the small area of the Milford Sound township removed from (the control) of the National Park… being within the park is a huge impediment.”

But her heart was at the medical centre where, in her nursing role, she took on the diabetes clinic.

The instances of Type two diabetes had continued to grow, and she had seen more younger people become afflicted with what might previously have been considered a disease that only affected older, less active people.

She said while she had seen more people with diabetes, it was not just a lifestyle disease, as was commonly imagined, but many factors came into play including ethnicity and it could also be inherited.

The good thing was that more people were more aware of the symptoms and treatment, she said.

But life hadn’t been all hard work, she had taken her turn on the stage with local theatrical group, Fiordland Players, with director the late Kath Gilligan among others. She had also been involved with the local Girl Guides.

Retirement means more time to work on the five acres that surround their home and there’s still volunteer work to be done such as driving the Te Anau Community Health Shuttle.

Diane Ridley and Hamish Mathieson 1981 in Sleeping Beauty pantomime. PHOTO: Supplied