Christine Hill is a busy woman. As well as being a director of Michael Hill Jeweller, she is an accomplished artist and art teacher, and has just opened, in Auckland, what is proving to be a successful exhibition of her paintings of whale vertebrae.
It is always tricky getting hold of Christine Hill, and this week was no exception.
The Queenstown Times managed to get a few moments with her on Sunday afternoon, while she sorted out which outfits to wear for the big awards ceremony, finalised the details on some design drawings for new products, and fielded a barrage of questions from husband Michael on the proofs of his new book.
Her main job though, is "being the voice of reason, keeping Michael Hill's feet on the ground and stopping him getting too big for his boots".
Her life might seem impossibly glamorous, but Christine is still the same plain-speaking, totally practical girl from Yorkshire.
She is not the sort of person to buy something that will only be worn once, and the dress she will be wearing at the awards in Monaco has already done good service - its last two outings were the Tongan King's coronation ball and the World Superyacht Awards in Venice.
She even wears borrowed diamonds.
And when she gets home from Monaco, you can be sure she will be straight into her trackpants and gumboots and off to feed the chickens.
So, Christine Hill, artist, how did it get to this?
Well, she left school at 15 and got a job in a department store office but was hopeless at it and hated the work.
But when a local art college held an exhibition of students' work in the store, she was so fascinated, she took a pamphlet and applied for a place. She got in, but her mother had to go back to work as a weaver full-time to pay the fees.
When Christine decided to become an art teacher, she had to get her school certificate first, so as well as studying full-time at art school, she had to study maths, geography and biology three nights a week and work as a waitress the other nights.
Once she became an art teacher, she could qualify to emigrate to New Zealand, where her mother had a great friend. She remembers getting a phone call at her school in Derbyshire "all the way from New Zealand" offering her a position at a Whangarei school.
The boat trip in 1964 was fabulous fun, but arriving in Wellington on a cold and rainy September night made the new immigrants wonder how deserted the rest of the country was if this was the capital.
But New Zealand has proven to be the right choice for Christine Hill.
- Miranda Spary
