As the retired generation manager and engineering boss at the Clyde and Roxburgh Dams from 2001 Graham Quinn helped keep the lights on throughout the country for many years.

These days with nearly 40 years’ of managing New Zealand power stations under his belt Graham may have a less ‘high-powered’ role but he’s still lighting up lives, generating kindness and keeping the lights on socially around Alexandra instead.

Since retiring in 2014 Graham, 73, has become a tireless community volunteer.

From 2016 he’s been heavily involved at the Alexandra Community Advice Network (ACAN) helping provide advice on everything from new business phone numbers and mobility parking permits to delivering Meals on Wheels and driving people to medical appointments.

There’s rarely a dull day in Graham’s volunteer life, or a gap in his calendar, although he will insist it’s only ‘an hour here and an hour there’.

With no taxis in Alexandra Graham, his wife Jill, and other volunteers, are on hand to drive the elderly or disabled who have no licence or car to appointments, including to medical centres, dentists, Dunstan Hospital or Cromwell to see a specialist. They’re also on the busy Meals on Wheels roster.

Graham picking up Meals on Wheels bins.

But even more satisfying for Graham is his involvement in the Drive My Life programme, which started in Invercargill in 2017 to help get vulnerable young drivers licensed and driving safely.

The programme, organised by REAP, works in conjunction with the Police and Corrections Department matching young learner drivers with adult mentor volunteers who work with them to get their driving up to standard so that they’re ready to sit their restricted or full licence.

“Often these young people don’t have parental support where they live, or their parents don’t have a vehicle for them to practise in,” Graham says.

“I sit in the car while they sit their practical licence test and with one young girl the instructor said, ‘You’ve passed.’ She jumped out of the car onto the street and yelled to nobody in particular, ‘I’ve passed! I’ve passed!’” Graham grins.

“It’s such a satisfying thing when you have moments like that.”

Graham (left) and fellow Drive my Life mentor Arnold Hooykaas with Central Otago REAP car.

One morning a month you’ll also find Graham and fellow Rotarians out wood splitting for those in need in the community at Salvation Army volunteer sessions at the Community Gardens.

“They provide free or low-cost firewood to needy families,” he says.

The need for this kind of assistance has increased greatly in recent years with Covid disruptions then tougher economic times.

Graham’s also on hand to help at Alexandra Rotary fundraisers and community events. A member since 2002 he served as president in 2005/06. He’s currently treasurer and has been for the past eight years.

Rotary ex-president Murray Washington (left) and incoming president Graham Quinn at the Alexandra Waterwheel in 2006.

It’s a busy time of year with book collection and sorting well underway for the popular annual Rotary Book Sale, held just after New Year.

“I’ve just come back from the book sale sorting. That’s a huge effort by everyone to get all the books in, sorted into categories and priced.”

Happy bargain hunting bookworms head off with shopping bags full of reading that will last them a year, he says.

There’s also the annual Rotary charity dinner and a quiz night which Graham, a recipient of the prestigious Paul Harris Fellow Award in 2016, always helps with.

Afterall when you’ve been relied upon to ensure there’s sufficient electricity supply for the country then you’re going to get the job done.

Graham at Rotary Club Paul Harris Fellow Award.

Graham helped fire up power plants in New Zealand for just on 40 years after graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering from Canterbury University in 1975.

Born in Temuka in 1951, the eldest of seven kids, his dad worked for New Zealand Insulators. As the eldest, Graham was pretty responsible and well behaved.

“I did get caned once at Temuka District High School for kicking the rugby ball back onto school grounds when it had landed outside the fence,” he grins.

From a young age Graham loved tinkering and fixing broken things, spending a lot of time on his uncle’s Rakaia farm doing just that.

Graham on his 250cc Suzuki in Wairakei Village 1972.

While at St Patrick’s High School in Timaru he developed a love of motorcycling, saving up for his first classic bike. He still owns an old Triumph and has always loved fixing old cars and motorcycles.

Graham thought he’d become an industrial chemist until the school vocational guidance counsellor suggested chemical engineering.

He scored his first engineer’s role at New Plymouth Power Sation in 1975.

For the first three or four years he lived in a NZ Electricity Department single men’s hostel, meeting wife of 45 years Jill, fresh back from her OE, in 1977.

Graham and Jill cycling in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 2015.

In 1989 Graham got a promotion to asset manager at the Wairakei Geothermal Power Station just outside Taupo, by now two kids in tow.

Learning about the new technology was challenging.

“I’d come from a gas-fired to a geothermal steam fired power station so there was a lot of learning to do, but we had a great team,” he says, fondly.

In 2001, he scored his dream job in Clyde, back nearer home turf.

“I was always keen to get back to the South Island. It was wonderful and I was very pleased.”

Graham and Alan Whiteland on Clyde Spillways.

For 13 years he managed the operation of the newly commissioned Clyde Dam, and the Roxburgh Dam, the biggest challenge getting all of the necessary Otago Regional Council resource consents approved once the Clyde Dam was built.

“It was a big effort by the whole team because without those consents, we couldn’t operate,” he says.

“That took until about 2007.”

While it was a serious business there was still room for a good Kiwi prank in his first days on that job.

Graham showing Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright the Clyde model.

As a new manager with no hydro experience the operational guys pulled one over him. '

“The first time the guys opened the sluice gate – a huge gate that lets water out, they came and told me there was a huge log jammed in it and asked what I was going to do about it,” Graham grins.

After sweating for a moment, he realised he was back in the south and the target of some good southern humour.

That job also landed him the butt of jokes on national TV when he was invited to a media event starring on Dai Henwood’s ‘Roll the Dai’ TV show.

“I’d never seen it, so I was being totally serious.”

Jill and Graham in Lebanon, Missouri on Route 66 in 2011.

Not so funny, was his daughter’s first school trip to Mount Ruapehu with her new Taupo school.

“It was our first week there and she was about nine. When they arrived back, she wasn’t on the bus. As the newbie they’d forgotten her, but luckily some tourists had come by and they brought her home,” Graham says.

“We were pretty worried, but the schoolteacher was also extremely concerned.”

It's hard to suddenly stop and do nothing after a long professional career, he says.

For him this time is for ‘putting something back into the community’.

“I do get a lot of satisfaction out of volunteering and there’s wonderful social interaction,” he says.

“Otherwise I’d be sitting at home and I’m still struggling with Sudoku.”

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