Marise Martin died on June 5, 14 months after being diagnosed with advanced cancer that had until then shown no symptoms.
She was perhaps best known in Otago as the Victorian Domestic Goddess.
This was a character she created to help promote the Oamaru Victorian Heritage Celebrations when she chaired the organising committee in 2006.
This theatrical talent was just one of many Marise deployed for the wider community, mostly to raise funds for heritage causes in the Waitaki district.
She was born in Alexandra in 1958, the eldest of the late Snow and Margaret Goodall’s four children.
The bright-eyed child excelled at school and read everything she could get her hands on, in between having adventures on the family’s Earnscleugh farm and orchard.
Marise left school part-way through her seventh form year at Dunstan High School and soon became employed as a social worker for what is now Oranga Tamariki.
She spent some 40 years in this profession, usually working with challenging situations under huge pressure.
Her ability to withstand this outlasted most others, and she never let it leak into her family and social life.
Marise studied for her degree in social work while still employed full-time.
Her sons Jon and Tom, with her first husband Nigel Newbery, were born when they lived in the converted former St Mary’s Anglican church in Herbert.
A few years after the couple separated, Marise met her future second husband Graeme Martin, known nowadays as Herbert, and with his sons Jason and Jeremy their new blended family was complete.
Marise and Herbert were enthusiastic members of the Herbert Heritage Group, masterminding and taking part in numerous activities aimed at enlightening and entertaining the community.
Nothing was too much trouble.
Marise loved to host elaborate gatherings at their home, and Herbert even built a replica of the pioneering Waianakarua dwelling for a celebration of its owner Charles Suisted, the first European settler in North Otago.
Having also joined the Oamaru Victorian Heritage Celebrations committee in answer to a call for new helpers, Marise became chairwoman and Herbert treasurer in 2005 — roles they continued the following year.
Marise used up all her annual leave, making many trips to Christchurch to meet then-sponsors Meridian Energy.
She put considerable diplomacy skills to use, uniting the district’s various heritage groups to make the celebrations accessible and fun for all.
She researched and organised a programme of activities such as Victorian games and horse-drawn carriage rides for school children in the week before the celebrations.
This encouraged a new generation of supporters, who also persuaded their parents to get involved.
The number of participants swelled to new levels, and a lot of people made or hired period costumes for the first time.
Marise filled a vacant Thursday evening entertainment slot in the celebrations by inventing the Victorian Domestic Goddess — a yesteryear version of Nigella Lawson.
She instructed her audience on how to run an efficient, hygienic household in the 1880s.
Her instructions included sweeping dirt floors with dried cabbage tree flowers, using handy roadside herbs to make culinary and cleaning products, and ensuring etiquette never lapsed.
It was such a hit that repeat performances were demanded.
Marise went on to write a series of stage shows based on her character, accompanied by Herbert, the late Else and Barry Mackenzie, Sally Brooker, and Maree Fox.
They put on performances at Totara Estate and Palmerston as well as in Oamaru’s Early Settlers’ Hall.
The shows became increasingly sophisticated and complex as Marise instinctively injected novel theatrical devices that she was astonished — and delighted — to see later in professional shows she attended when they toured to Oamaru.
Marise and Herbert tied the knot in the Herbert Hall in 2008.
It was not so much an event as a phenomenon.
All the guests wore Victorian costumes and many contributed to an after-dinner concert.
They included Alf’s Imperial Army performing an orchestrated number, artist Donna Demente leading her dogs in a chorus of howls, and the beloved local celebrity the Queen of Windsor addressing her subjects.
The pièce de résistance was juggler and contortionist Thom Monckton, the son of one of Herbert’s bookbinding classmates, debuting the hilarious antics he was about to make into an international award-winning career.
Marise adapted a Dawn French television episode into an absurdly funny sketch in which Herbert was her image in her bedroom "mirror".
That format was repeated several years later as a lead-in to a fundraising Victorian cooking demonstration by Wendy Simpson as Mrs Beaton.
Marise played the part of Queen Victoria in her black mourning clothes and white coronet and veil.
Sally Brooker was dressed identically behind a "frame" cut out Herbert had built.
The portrait came to life to quibble with the queen and berate Herbert as he took the part of Victoria’s Scottish companion John Brown.
The sketch opened and closed with music by Queen — another of Marise’s witty touches.
After the first Covid-19 lockdown, Marise and Herbert became the publicans at Oamaru’s famous Criterion Hotel.
It had been closed to the public for a year and the couple spent weeks scrubbing, painting, and restoring it to its original Victorian splendour.
It was a highly popular watering hole, largely thanks to the Martins’ inclusive hospitality.
Marise said she loved nothing more than encouraging patrons to meet each other and share conversations in the cosy bar.
However, their tenure was brought to a premature halt by an ankle injury that afflicted Herbert and by the difficulties of operating under the Covid traffic light system in the second wave of lockdowns.
After they left in 2022, Marise was delighted to be hired by Heritage New Zealand as the property manager at Totara Estate, Clarks Mill, and Waikouaiti’s Matanaka.
It was the perfect job for her, she said.
She boosted visitor numbers and community participation rapidly with activities that enlivened local history.
Her talks, interlacing facts with charming and clever observations, attracted large crowds.
Marise was also hugely popular as a presenter to Otago gardening groups and as a tutor at North Otago night classes and summer school sessions.
She was a self-taught horticulturist of some renown and had studied herbalism.
She devoured research projects and had always wanted to write books on herbs and domestic goddess practices.
She had to give up her job after her illness diagnosis, but continued to spend happy hours in her Oamaru garden and with her gardening friends throughout her gruelling treatment.
Marise always owned up to being a Pollyanna — a characteristic she retained to the end.
Just three days before she died, she wrote in her garden diary of the pleasure she took from being wheeled into the garden and seeing what was blooming in the winter conditions.
The admiration and esteem in which she was held was evidenced at her funeral, where her exceptional kindness, intelligence, generosity and love of life were widely acknowledged. — Sally Brooker
