For all the time that I have know Gay, it was always Gay and Andy, inseparable in everything they did. Gay and Andy were committed active members of the Paisley Natural History Society. In the mid seventies when I arrived in Paisley Museum I soon became good friends with them. They were regulars at our outings and I recently learned that it was on a Society’s geological visit to the quarries at Hessilhead that they spotted the house which became both their home and the Hessilhead Centre. Older members of the Society will know them from those early days, younger members will know them because they still attended meetings, even as recently as earlier this year.
Gay and Andy spent a great many years creating, running and expanding their wildlife rescue work. Starting, in the early 70s from a fox rescue in their Council house in Paisley, they then moved for a short time to Heathfield farmhouse close to the entrance to Muirshiel Country Park with an expanded centre with several pens and a small treatment setup in their house. In 1979 they moved to Hessilhead, now some 20 acres with a very large operation catering for swans, seals, otters, birds of prey and all the rest, from small to large. This was their great vocation for which they became very widely known and respected.
It is not only wildlife care within their centre which motivated them, I remember well in 1999 one of the buildings in the old Linwood car plant was being demolished whilst a large colony of gulls was breeding on the roof. Gay and Andy led, not only the protests, but the rescue of many of the chicks from the site.
In 2003 Gay and Andy campaigned ceaselessly to end Scottish Natural Heritage’s controversial hedgehog cull in the Uists. After the cull was stopped hedgehogs were live-trapped, and taken to Hessilhead, some by air! others in the Hessilhead ambulance, from Oban to Lochboisdale and home – a round trip of 400 miles. I helped with one of those trips.
For their work they were given MBEs in 2003.
Andrew Christie, Co-Founder and Partner, Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Trust, Ayrshire. For services to Scottish Wildlife.
Gay, Mrs. Christie, Co-Founder and Partner, Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Trust, For services to to Scottish Wildlife.
As long as I knew Gay she was always a calm and cheerful soul. The only time I saw sadness in her was during the bird flu epidemic. The distress at not being able to take more animals into the centre and even having to put some of the patients down was a cruel burden for her and it showed.
Sadly, after a short illness, Gay died on the 28th of May. She will long be remembered as a champion of wildlife rescue in Scotland.
Dave Mellor
Paisley Natural History Society 