A Wānaka resident has mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth II (on September 8) in heartfelt style, recalling a lifetime of memories, and wearing her black pearls to commemorate the UK’s longest reigning monarch.

Wānaka’s Aspiring Lifestyle Village resident Cathie Bryan (84) and her husband moved to New Zealand from Scotland six years ago.

Cathie shared some of her lifetime of memories of the Queen with the Wānaka App, and talked of watching the Queen move through life’s various stages as she followed a decade behind.

Cathie saw the Queen a couple of times when she lived in London (“she was beautiful”), and attended her coronation in 1953.

“Obviously we went to the coronation,” she said.

Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. PHOTO: Supplied

Cathie camped in the mall with friends, a foreshadowing of the people camping out and waiting for hours in “the queue” to see the Queen lying in state in Westminster Abbey 70 years later.

The coronation crowds were much smaller than the funeral crowds, because the Queen was young and untested in 1953, Cathie said, while now she leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of service.

“She’d done exactly what she said she would do,” she said.

Cathie believes the Queen played a vital role as the British Empire transitioned to the Commonwealth. 

“She was a very wise person, she never ever got involved in politics, and she was wise enough to let the Commonwealth go its own way.”

She believes the Queen adapted to every stage of her life and the changing times - so many changes during her 70 years on the throne. 

Cathie remembers the beauty of the Queen’s golden coach. PHOTO: Supplied

“For all of us in that generation she was always there, and always a guiding hand.

“She never let us down.”

Cathie believes the Royals’ support of a range of charities and other causes is one of the best aspects of the monarchy. 

She talks of the Royal Family intimately, as if she knows them.

“They’ve been our family - all our lives - and we’ve always looked up to them,” she said.

But some of the royal antics were also entertaining - something of a long-running soap opera.

“Yes, you watch everything that’s going on,” she said.

Cathie worked in Knightsbridge, London, in the 1950s opposite the flat of divorced royal equerry Peter Townsend, when Princess Margaret was dating him.

“It was good fun to see what she was up to - we could see them coming and going.”

Prince Andrew’s now ex-wife Sarah Ferguson was “the black sheep” of the family, Cathie says, and, well, the less said about Prince Andrew the better.

More people turned out for the Queen’s funeral than for her coronation. PHOTO: Dan Kitwood/Getty

Cathie also remembers when William, Prince of Wales, and Kate Middleton (now the Princess of Wales) were courting when they attended St Andrews University in the early 2000s. Cathie and her husband lived in St Andrews at the time and said “there was an awful lot of security” around the young couple.

Cathie agrees with the speculation of some royal pundits that the Queen chose to go to Balmoral at the end of her life, believing it may help unite the UK. 

She disagrees with First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon’s desire for Scotland to become independent from the UK, and says while Balmoral was the Queen’s “favourite place” it was also symbolic that she died there during the debate about Scottish independence.

And as for King Charles III, he will make a “very good king”, Cathie believes. 

Cathie watched the Queen’s funeral at home, and again the next morning (Monday September 19) on the big screen at the village’s Lifestyle Centre, where cake was served with tea in fine china.

The funeral “was lovely - such a pageant”.

Royal pageantry is part of her identity, Cathie says, and she believes the British do it better than anyone else. “Everything is worked out so well.”

Yes, the cost of such pageantry is “extortionate”, Cathie said, but “we just have to swallow it”.

“If that were gone, I don’t know what would be piecing us together.”