Lady of Glenorchy leaves great legacy
The skies wept on Monday when Reta Thomson, 94, was laid to rest with her late husband Tommy in the Glenorchy cemetery.
They had been so close, Reta caring for her husband until his passing and she then in turn cared for by their artist daughter Annette Thomson.
Now they are together, the circle of their lives complete with son Geoffrey and his Diana the Thomsons, of Mt Earnslaw, and great-grandchildren growing up in the part of the world they loved.
Reta Groves was born just over Lake Wakatipu at Routeburn station, then so isolated it proved a perfect training ground for the life she was to share with Tommy when they married and settled on Earnslaw station just after the end of World War II.
The impact this couple was to have in every facet of the life and development of Glenorchy cannot be overstated.
But where the saying is that ‘‘behind every good man is a good woman,’’ in their case we would say ‘‘beside the good man’’ because Reta worked alongside Tommy Thomson on the farm, in local and national political efforts,with the family, developing ideas for future tourism and the economic sustainability of the valley they loved, opening their home to others.
Their hospitality widely known, unstinting, generous, given with love . . . with heart.
During the war years Reta and her sister Betty had worked as land girls while the district’s men were serving overseas.
They mustered high country runs, shore sheep and drove Bryant’s tour bus between Kinloch and Routeburn, a popular day trip from Queenstown.
Tommy, born on a Dunedin dairy farm, graduated from the Otago school of mines as a mining engineer and mines surveyor.
On the outbreak of war he served overseas.
On his return to New Zealand he went to the scheelite mines at Glenorchy where he met Reta from Routeburn station.
They married on March 28, 1945 celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary in 2005 with wonderful warmth and hospitality for their family and friends.
Queenstown writer Irene Adamson, a close family friend over all those years, recalled it also as a celebration of Mt Earnslaw, the family’s life there, thehigh country station itself and those who had worked on it, for it and through it.
Reta Thomson was a skilled hostess who could cater for a crowd, and often did, no one turned away.
The homestead, run by this one woman hosted eminent visitors like British PM Baroness Thatcher and her husband Sir Denis, people who loved the Thomsons’ unaffectedness, their natural warmth, their style, their food.
When daughter Jill and her husband Christopher Neame married in a church in Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands, her parents were in attendance, Reta baking their wedding cake.
Later that year, 1975, the Thomsons welcomed people to a function held in their specially decorated barn to enable the district to share in the occasion, Jill wearing her wedding gown, her mother baking another wedding cake. Sadly, Chris was to die later in Johannesburg where the couple were living with their three young daughters – Lucy, Margot and Jessica.
Eventually Jill settled her Neame family back in New Zealand, in Christchurch, with close ties to Glenorchy.
Geoffrey and Diana have two sons James and Thomas. Jill’s youngest daughter Jessica Neame married Stacy Coburn and they live in Queenstown, their two small boys, George and Ace, Reta’s beloved great-grandchildren. Reta was the last of her Groves family, going through the sorrow of losing siblings, old friends, son in law Chris Neame and then her treasured Tommy.
And on Monday, (July 18) Reta Thomson, 94, passed away dying as she had lived – with love, a wonderful spirit, trust in others, and an unquenchable faith in the future.