More than 20 years ago Coral started volunteering at the Waihi Beach Police Station answering the telephone because at that time the police phone lines were not centralised.
"So if the guys were busy we would just answer the phones and most times they were calls we could deal with - often it was calls about lost property or people wanting to know things."
Her neighbour at the time told her the local coastguard was also looking for volunteers to help answer the phone. Coral had retired from her work and she missed 'having a job' some of the police calls involved coastguard so she was already understanding what the needs could be.
"I morphed from volunteering with the police to also volunteering at coastguard. I did a radio operators course and began to have regular time slots on the VHF radio."
Coral used to do her radio shifts at the coastguard headquarters at Bowentown but now she has a radio at home and can easily do her three night-shifts a week from the comfort of her lounge.
She is unflappable, and calmly works the radio, taking trip reports - where boats report in via the radio, when they are leaving the area (particularly going out over the Bowentown Bar) and then calling the coastguard radio again on their return. She says she often recognises voices, although they use the boat name and she thinks many boaties recognise her voice as well.
Along with the 'trip reports' she fields many calls about the state of the Bowentown Bar.
"What is it like today? And when the weather turns a bit nasty and boats are still outside the bar she gets calls from boats returning home wanting to know 'how the bar is running'.
Coral talks about 'having all her boats home' or knowing where they are staying for the night if they have decided to stay out longer. Once she can account for all the trip reports she hands over the responsibility or listening watch to Maritime Radio who monitor the radio channels day and night.
Coral has plenty of memories - most of them good but she certainly also remembers the times when boats or people have got into trouble.
She says the most important thing, she believes, is in keeping good communication between the radio operator and the person in trouble. Updating them of what is happening, how long the Coastguard is likely to be, just keeping them informed and calm so that when the rescue mission takes over they have as much information as possible and the people on the boat have confidence that someone is coming. Keeping that listening watch going so if there are any further developments she can either pass it on to police or coastguard.
And even after 20 years Coral is still keen. "I will keep doing my radio work for a little while longer," she says.
