Kathy (Kathleen) Hazell is a bit of an institution in Wangaratta!   

For many decades she and her husband Ray gave huge joy to so many people by transforming their home into Santa Land over Christmas – festooning it with festive lights and turning the front garden into a cross between Santa’s workshop and the North Pole! 

Kathy, resplendent in a red suit with a full white beard, would rush out to the busloads of people stopping to admire the display – many from aged care homes in Wangaratta – and give them home-made miniature plum puddings and lollies. 

“It was a lot of fun,” she laughs.  “We made a lot of people very happy.” 

Over the years Kathy, 74, also used to make blankets for the Royal Children’s Hospital and do crochet work, much of which she gave to charity and to friends.  She still helps out wherever she can as she continues to live up to the theme of the Victorian Seniors Festival (1-31 October) of ‘Connect. Create. Celebrate.’   

Like the time Kathy, who has arthritis in her hands, asked Ray, 76,  to help her chop up meat and veggies to cook a wonderful supper for a neighbour who’s wife was battling cancer. 

“I love helping people,” Kathy explains.  “A lot of people say to me ‘you put other people before yourself,’ and I tell them ‘that’s the way it’s always been.  I’m not going to change now.” 

Kathy grew up in Wangaratta, and at the age of 15 left school to start work at the Wangaratta Woollen Mills where her father was employed.  “Every day I’d cycle to work and every time I went past the plasterworks factory in this one particular street, I’d hear a wolf-whistle!” 

That was Ray.  The two teenagers fell in love, were married in July 1969 and nearly 55 years, two children and two grandchildren later, are still devoted to each other.   

Over the years Ray worked as a plasterer, and Kathy remained at the wool factory, going from working on the assembly line to serving in the wool shop on the premises.  Both their roots in the area run deep.  Ray has visited Queensland, but Kathy has never left Victoria. 

Kathy is fiercely determined to continue living in her home of the last 50 years for as long as possible, thanks to the services she receives through her government-funded home care package through Uniting AgeWell.  “It’s my home,” she says.  “They can carry me out in a box one day!  I never want to leave.” 

She’s making sure she doesn’t have to.  Working closely with Care Advisor Katina (Tina) Manousaki, Kathy, who has chronic back pain and who underwent spinal surgery after injuring herself, has an electric bed as well as a walker.  She also used her home care package to buy two mobility scooters and installed rails and ramps around the house.   “Tina listens to what I need,” says Kathy, “and then somehow makes it all happen.” 

Kathy also receives personal care as well as help around the home and has grown very fond of the Personal Care Workers, especially Kate Davern, who she loves chatting to. 

In the meantime, Kathy and Ray have acquired Milly, an adorable baby poodle with oodles of personality, who keeps them very busy.  Kathy also enjoys watching television, plans on taking up crochet work again if her hands improve and does her bit helping Ray to cook the meals. 

Ray loves woodwork and has made an assortment of clocks, benches, birdbaths and everything else in between.  He also loves doing wood burning art on timber. 

“It’s a good life,” says Kathy. “I’m very grateful to Uniting AgeWell for making it so easy for us to stay at home.”