Elizabeth Ann Frauenfelder – “Betty” – celebrated her 83rd birthday in February with a seafood luncheon party, declaring how well she felt.
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She died on March 26 after a very short illness.
Betty was born in 1935 at Mrs Cousemacker’s nursing home in Pambula. Her mother was Edna Mitchelson (nee Dunn) and her father was fisherman Don Mitchelson.
Don penned salmon in the Merimbula lake awaiting transport to city markets. Firstly, where Fish Pen Road begins and later in the vicinity of Mitchies.
Betty grew up in what was referred to then by locals as the ‘red-roofed house’ at the end of Merimbula causeway.
Her maternal great grandfather was Irish convict James Dunn.
Her other maternal great grandparents, Joseph and Mary Berry, came as free settlers from Scotland/Yorkshire disembarking the Bermondsey in Eden in 1848.
They purchased the dilapidated Cherry Tree Inn at the end of the causeway as a wedding gift for daughter Elizabeth Berry when she married James Leonard Dunn (Dunns Road).
In 1941 Betty started at the Merimbula Public School (Merimbula Old School Museum). From 1946 she attended St Patrick’s Convent school in Bega.
In 1951 she completed a commerce certificate, proudly accomplishing 80 words per minute on an old Remington typewriter.
Late 1951 she started in the office at the Merimbula Bacon Factory, where she met accountant Max Frauenfelder.
Betty and Max married in 1955. Betty’s mother gave her the block next door as a wedding present. There they built a ‘white house’ and raised their three children: Margo, Rodney and Mark.
She returned to the Bacon Factory office in 1965, and over the years also worked at the Norfolk Pine Motel, Merimbula Newsagency and the Do Drop In (now Crankys).
Betty and Max established Elizabeth Lodge holiday units behind the ‘white house’ in 1976.
The Tween Waters Tourist Park opened in December 1982 and operated as a family business until December 2001, when Betty and Max retired to a cottage in the northeast corner of the park.
Son Mark and his wife Margie took over the business until it sold in late 2016. Betty moved only once more in her life in 2015 – but only one block away to Marine Parade.
Over the years Betty and Max travelled extensively.
Max died in 2011 but Betty continued to pursue her love of travel right up to the last weeks of her life, although her son Rodney’s passing in June 2017 took the wind from her sails.
Betty was passionate about family, friends, travel, cinema, musicals, shopping, seafood…oh, and The Bold and the Beautiful.
