O'Conor Home

16/06/2026

A big thank you to Westport News for sharing the beautiful series "Days Of Our Lives" with stories from our residents. There have been about 6 stories published to date, one per week - are you following along? We'd love your feedback. Would you like to keep seeing these stories?

We're having some lovely feedback. These real life stories 'transport you back through time' and bring home the reality that "the old folks" at the Home could be us and we could be them ... only time separates us.

Excerpt, Joyce Sara: "Joyce grew up through the years surrounding the Great Depression and wartime, when families had to be resourceful and careful with money. “You didn’t throw anything away,” she recalls. Paper bags were reused, household items were repaired, and people worked with what they had. Washing clothes was also a much harder task than today. Laundry was boiled in a copper tub heated by a fire, then wrung through a hand-operated ‘mangle’ before being hung out to dry. Looking back now, Joyce knows life required far more physical effort than it does today. “We just did what we had to do to survive. It was normal"."

When you read the stories you realise that these are the folks who built Buller. Their stories are both light hearted and heartbreaking, refreshing, and told with candid honesty that gives pause for thought. We would love to know your thoughts and stories of your own...

11/06/2026

Here's another legend local business helping keep our loved ones local by getting behind our Buy A Brick fundraising to build the desperately needed expansion... thank you FreshChoice Westport 👏👏

🧱 HELP BUILD THE FUTURE OF O'Conor Home 🧱

O'Conor Home is fundraising for a much-needed 24-bed extension to help meet the growing demand for aged care services in Buller.

As our population continues to age, this extension will help ensure local families can access the care and support their loved ones need, right here in our community.

You can help by purchasing a brick for just $10.

Our goal is to sell 1,000 bricks through FreshChoice Westport. If we reach that target, the Buller community will have raised $10,000 towards the project.

To help support this important cause, FreshChoice Westport will donate an additional $1,000 if our customers purchase 1,000 bricks.

Together, that's an incredible $11,000 contribution towards providing more beds and care for our ageing population.

❤️ Brick entries are now available at all FreshChoice Westport checkouts.

Whether you buy 1 brick or 10, every contribution helps bring this important project closer to reality.

Thank you to O'Conor Home for the incredible work they do for our community and for giving us the opportunity to be part of this important project.

🧱 Buy a brick.
❤️ Support local aged care.
🏡 Help build Buller's future.

Let's show what the Buller community can achieve when we work together.

05/06/2026

This sort of support is very humbling. Thank you Rainbow Cake Kitchen Ltd 😘 Not only selling bricks for our expansion fundraising but your $500 is such a generous and inclusive way to ensure that anyone can contribute. Beautiful gesture.

🧱 Pay It Forward – Support the O'Conor Home 🧱

We're proud to be supporting the O'Conor Home's fundraising campaign for a new 25-bed extension.

Bricks are available for $10 each.

We also understand that times are tough for many people right now. That's why we're paying it forward with a $500 contribution.

If you'd like to support the O'Conor Home but can't quite stretch to the full $10 for a brick, simply make a donation of any amount and we'll top it up from our $500 fund until it's exhausted.

We believe it's better to give something than nothing at all, and every contribution helps make a difference.

Together, let's build something special for our community—one brick at a time.

04/06/2026

Every brick sold counts. Every shower chair, every lounge chair, every item ticked off the Giving Menu gets us closer to the extension O'Conor Home needs to keep our locals close to home. 🙏🏻
We've turned the Giving Menu into a flipbook so you can have a proper browse from the couch: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/fc1aba53a4.html

Have a flick through. Maybe it's a brick in the wall with your name on it. Or a shower chair, so a resident has dignity in a private moment. Or a lounge chair, the kind you sink into for a chat that turns into an afternoon.

The back of the printed Giving Menu has our bank account details so you can donate direct (rather than going through Givealittle). The flipbook has them too.

📖And if you'd like to stock the printed Giving Menu somewhere (your shop, office, waiting room), flick us a message and we'll drop some to you.

01/06/2026

The Giving Menu for our fundraising for our 24 bed extension - which is desperately needed in our community) is live via our Give-A-Little page. This is also where you can buy a brick online 🧱 every brick helps us keep our people close to home.

You can also look out for the O'Conor Home table where you can buy a brick in person or collect one of our Giving Menus to select other ways your family can support us.

Our next day Freshchoice Wednesday June 3rd from 10am.

This page is to raise funds for an expansion that will help restore aged-care capacity that has been lost from the Buller District.

24/05/2026

From a brick in the wall, to a chair, a tree, a bed, a chair or even a whole wing; help us build the next stage and keep our loved ones here in Buller.

24/05/2026

Our giving menu is now live - you can choose to donate anonymously or have your name, family name or business name acknowledged in our donor register and permanently in our recognition wall. Just tell us when you donate via Givealittle, or tell us when you donate direct.

Why we're building:
O'Conor Home is the only rest home on the West Coast contracted to provide every level of care on a single site — rest home, hospital, secure dementia, palliative, respite, and day care.

We care for up to 68 people. We employ 75 staff. We are full, with a waiting list, and the next-nearest equivalent care is as far away as Christchurch.

Stage 5 is a 24-bed wing with full ensuites, a dementia-appropriate lounge, and modern clinical infrastructure. Build starts August 2026.

The Trust has secured the majority of the $13,351,627 build cost. The gap to close is $2.9 million, which we expect to fill with a mix of contributions from government, grants and community fundraising.
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https://oconorhome.netlify.app/ (when you click an item it takes you to our Givealittle page).