Ynys Joy Fraser, QSM

‘The more I look back on my life, the more I realise what a DANCE it has been’ (Ynys Joy Fraser, July 2017).

Ynys Joy Fraser (nee Wallis) was born 3 August 1917 at Princes Gate, London, in the midst of a Zeppelin raid. The nurses were so intrigued peeping through the blacked-out window they ignored her. Undeterred she arrived under her own steam. As she started so she has continued.

Although born in London both her parents, Dr Stanley and Elsie Wallis, were New Zealanders. Her grandmother on her father’s side (Eliza Wallis b.1846 in NZ) was an early suffragette and friend of Kate Shepherd, while her grandparents on her mother’s side (Charlotte and Samuel Williams) had eloped from Wales, settling first in Oz and then NZ. Perhaps that explains that blend of strong feminist instincts coupled with a wild romanticism so characteristic of Ynys.

She returned as a baby to NZ. On the way she got a tummy bug (she was moving onto solids and the boat was not equipped to deal with the very young). It took her another five years before she recovered. Shortly after arriving her father was asked to take over as medical superintendent at King George V hospital (now the Rotorua Public Hospital). They lived in a house on top of Hospital hill. From there she and her younger brother Roger went to Rotorua Primary – not starting until she was seven because of her illness.

Ynys’s secondary school education was at Woodford House in Havelock North, arriving just after the Napier earthquake. Those school years hold strong positive memories for her. In fact she stayed on an extra year, joining the staff while finishing her LTCL in Elocution from Trinity College, London.

She then decided to pursue a career as an actress. She was accepted for an audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and went across to London with her mother in tow. She was offered a place. Shortly after her father, still back in New Zealand, fell seriously ill. Her mother decided to return and Ynys felt she needed to be there too. Although her father recovered, the war prevented Ynys returning to London.

Ynys was never short of admirers but around that time she met Kenneth. He was an Englishman who had come to NZ and had fallen in love with Hamurana. He was farming and the courtship revolved around trips to the Waikato and elsewhere to livestock auctions. In a broken-down car, somewhere in the middle of the Mamakus, Kenneth proposed. They were married at St Lukes on November 5, 1941 with Kenneth in uniform. After a short honeymoon on Mayor Island Kenneth went overseas, serving in the Pacific for the remainder of the war.

But Ynys had already fallen pregnant and Christine was born in 1942. They lived most of the war with her parents in the Services Hospital at Rotorua. In time Ynys was recruited into the war effort getting her HT licence in the process. What she drove, and where, remains one of the war’s mysteries.

On returning from the Pacific, Kenneth developed Hamurana as a tourist resort and fishing lodge. Ynys meanwhile had a growing family to look after. In the early 1960’s Ynys and Kenneth separated and he left NZ to look after his ailing mother. Ynys remained at Hamurana and for a period ran the Springs singlehanded. While quiet in winter, in summer she had to be up around 5am to start making scones for the morning and afternoon teas which were served at the Lodge, often not finishing till well after dark. Before taking this on she had not really worked outside the home, let alone run a business. But Hamurana remained viable under her watch.

Hamurana was eventually sold meaning Ynys had to find a new source of income. The hospital was needing someone to start up a medical library. That she had no knowledge of librarianship, and limited medical knowledge, proved no barrier. In time she winkled books out of the various staff and set them up in a little back room she was given. The concept proved a success. The hospital supported her to train as a librarian partly in Wellington and also at the Auckland hospital. After a couple of years duelling with the Dewey system the library flourished - so much so that it was given a large purpose-built new space. With her well-honed political prejudices she refused to join the union (which was compulsory then) and every year applied to be exempt on conscience grounds – a big debating point with family.

When she retired her life started to grow in different directions. With no children at home she got heavily involved in her community.

She and a few others had held St Barnabas together when it was priest-less, believing (rightly) that it would flourish again. Church, and especially St Barnabas where she has worshipped for over 70 years, has been an important part of her life since Woodford days. Likewise ballet has been a lifelong interest and she danced right up to the time arthritis claimed her hips.

She then invested more time in other interests – gardening club, floral art, embroidery, spinning, rugs for refugees, Zonta, Red Hatters, Jazz club, Friends of the Museum, Prison Fellowship, Homeless trust, Hospice, QE trust to name but some. In 2003 she was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal – recognising not only her wide involvement in the community but perhaps more so her complete immersion in each of the activities she undertook: when she was there, she was there 100%. Her latest interest started ten years ago when she put an ad in the paper to hold a party for others 90 and over. Many came. And from the stories that were shared have come four books written with Alison Brown.

Family has been the central focus of Ynys’s life. As a mother of four, grandmother of fourteen, and great grandmother of twenty-four (with number twenty-five standing by) she has maintained a special and nurturing relationship with every one of them, trying to be with each at their special occasions. It is a pleasure and privilege for this large family to now be able to provide that similar nurturing and encouragement as she enjoys these last years of her life.

Source: Written by Ynys' son Iain Fraser.

2018: To mark 125 years since New Zealand women won the vote, award-winning Tauranga author Debbie McCauley has released a non-fiction bilingual children’s book on her suffragist ancestor. Eliza and the White Camellia: A Story of Suffrage in New Zealand tells the story of Debbie’s fourth great aunt, suffragist Eliza Wallis (nee Hart), a first-wave feminist who actively sought the vote for women. Eliza also happens to be the grandmother of Ynys Fraser (nee Wallis) QSM, the ‘grande dame’ of Rotorua, who on August 3 of this year turned 101-years-old. Ynys is related through her father, Wilfred Stanley Wallis OBE, who was the youngest of Eliza and her husband John’s twelve children. During the book launch on Saturday December 1, Ynys attend the launch at the Tauranga City Library with her son Iain. Source: https://www.sunlive.co.nz/news/194811-suffragist-grandmother-honour...

Born in the shadow of a Zeppelin: Early recollections of Ynys Fraser by Alison Brown was an entry in the 2012 Memoir and Local History Competition. See: https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/6258