Scott Bevan discusses politics and lifestyle with Kay Fraser over lunch

Yet it seems she’s just hiding the pain.

“A sore ankle, the calves and legs are a little bit sore, and I did have an injury,” Cr Fraser recounts, explaining she hurt her ankle while training. But there was no way she was going to withdraw.

“I knew I had to do it. I was on social media, I had my pink joggers on Facebook. So I took my grandson, Toby, and we did the last leg. Three point two kilometres was a bit of a long haul. I was running and walking, running and walking. We came 36th out of 41, I think, which is not too bad, given it’s my first year. I’m keen to do it again next year.”

Into her second year of a four-year term as mayor, Kay Fraser is still learning to pace herself. She seems to be everywhere around the lake – and on it. Just a couple of weeks earlier, she had been on the back of a jet ski, ripping around the water we can see out of the cafe windows, promoting the Lake Mac Big Weekend.

“Oh it was amazing!”, she enthuses.  

And Cr Fraser spends a lot of time travelling to the 90 or so communities sprinkled around the lake.

“I have a council car and I received that in February and I now have nearly 19,000 km on my car,” she says. “I did give that pledge I’d be all around the city, so I think it’s important that I do that. 

“People want to see their mayor and be able to talk to their mayor about any issues. I need to be accessible and they need to know who I am, they need to get to know me. They can’t get to know me if I’m sitting in my office.”

BORN in 1953 in the central NSW town of Wellington, Kay Field was the youngest of five children. Her father was a painter and also helped build the Burrendong Dam. 

Clive Field, his daughter says, had a drinking problem, but “he was a strong influence for me in shaping my social compass, my social values and social justice and social equity”.

“He was very much concerned about the workers, his mates, and everyone in the community. It was that caring, nurturing, equity, making sure everyone had a fair go and had access to different things.

“Even though we didn’t have a lot of money, we didn’t have access to a lot of things, we didn’t get the big presents at Christmas time, I never owned a push bike, that didn’t matter to me,” she recalls. “I didn’t realise we had less than other kids, because we were all together as kids. There wasn’t that social ladder, as such, in Wellington back then.”

As a teenager, Kay wanted to help others by becoming a nurse: “But when I was 15, Mum wouldn’t allow me to leave home, and I would’ve had to leave home to be a nurse. She wasn’t letting her youngest daughter leave home. Very protective.”

Kay moved with her father and mother, Daphne, to Newcastle. Her Dad was hoping for a fresh start in a new place. But when she was 16, the girl who had wanted to help save lives had to witness her father losing his. 

“He had been on a drinking binge, three or four days,” she recalls. “My Dad was sitting on the lounge and he had a massive brain haemorrhage. I was there. That was pretty horrific. We didn’t even have a phone in the house. I had to go next door to get them to ring up for an ambulance.

“I felt like I hadn’t got to know him. Being 16, I didn’t know him as well as I would have liked to. I felt like I had missed out, because all the others had got to know him better than I had.

“There was just Mum and me. ‘Here we are on our own’. So we moved to Dubbo.”

Having followed her Mum’s advice to learn to type –  “you will always have a job” – the teenager found work in the local motor registry. That job took her to Sydney, then, as a woman in her early 20s, to the Charlestown motor registry. 

“My impression was it was just like a big country town,” she says of the area. “But I really liked it.” 

Around this time, Kay Field became interested in politics, primarily through the voice of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. 

“I thought he was inspirational and he had a lovely voice,” she says. “He was someone I could listen to, and I liked his values. He was someone who caught my attention and sparked that political bone.”

She became involved in local issues, ranging from high-rise development along Belmont’s shores to fighting the closure of Swansea pool. Yet she didn’t envisage entering politics herself. Her life was busy.

She had married Carey Fraser. When they first met, he reminded her of her father, the way he jingled the coins in his pockets.

“I remember thinking, ‘My Dad used to do that’. But there was something really warm and nice about him, really genuine,” Cr Fraser says of her partner of 35 years. “I knew he was right. He’s always been very supportive. Whatever my dreams are, he’ll support me.”

Kay Fraser was helping raise twin boys, Steven and Peter, and was working as a manager at the Mayfield motor registry. But after 24 years with the state government agency, she wanted a change. She quit.

“I was stale, I had to do something, I had to do something else,” Cr Fraser says.

“People were questioning me, thinking it was just madness and asking me, ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘I don’t know’. 

“I just thought something would happen. Something would work out. And it did. I had a neighbour come and say Allan Morris was looking for someone to work for him.”

Helping the former Federal MP for Newcastle, Kay Fraser felt she had found what she was meant to be doing, somewhere “I can make a change and make a difference”. But Kay Fraser believed she could make a bigger difference by stepping into the political arena herself. She was elected as a Labor councillor 13 years ago.  

Despite having worked on big-picture issues in a Federal MP’s office, Kay Fraser wanted to be involved in local government.  

“I think you make more of a difference,” Cr Fraser muses. “Thirteen councillors. You’re a voice out of 13. In state and federal parliament, your voice is much smaller in that arena.”

While a councillor, she did toy with the idea of seeking a state seat. But that’s now been ruled out: “I love being the mayor.”

“People say, ‘You must have a lot of petty issues’, but there’s no petty issues. If something’s really important to someone, it’s a big issue for them, we should never dismiss it. And I’d like to think I try to help people. 

“If I can resolve that issue or do something - I don’t have a magic wand - but hopefully I can help someone get something better out of life, help them in some shape or form.”

Cr Fraser concedes there is one skill she needs to learn: “The trouble with me is I can’t say ‘no’. If people want to come and see me, or people want me to go there or wherever, I don’t say ‘no’.”

But husband Carey helps ensure she does have some time out, and that she remains grounded.  

“When you’re at home, you’re not the mayor!,” she says, quoting her husband, with an unabashed and engaging laugh. “I have to do my share [of the housework] and the cooking.”

She says the best moments in her time as mayor are the citizenship ceremonies – “just so special and so wonderful” – and the most frustrating has been the pace of realising the Lake Macquarie Transport Interchange, which she says is needed to unlock land between Cardiff and Glendale to provide more affordable housing sites and local jobs. 

By the end of this term as mayor, Councillor Fraser says, “I’d like to think we have a city that has provided more housing for people, I’d like to see our economy growing massively, I’d like to see a lot more jobs here, I’d like to see a shared pathway right around our city.” 

In the meantime, Kay Fraser looks out for a more modest indication about how life by the lake is going for the city’s 205,000 residents. 

“When I go down to the lake or go for walks, and I see people talking and laughing, that tells me people are happy,” she reasons. 

“And that’s what I want. I want people to be happy.”