Elizabeth 'Betty' Balneaves

My grandmother lived a full life until the day she died, November 7th. Just a few short weeks ago she celebrated her 95th birthday with a party at her home - matching the stragglers, my brother Sorley and cousin Tim, with whisky-drinking endurance into the wee hours of the morning. I have decided to return from New Zealand for her funeral in Scotland. Travelling round the world to celebrate her memory seems fitting. She was the most intrepid explorer I have ever known. My father, J Laughton Johnston, wrote the following obituary for The Scotsman (Tuesday 14th November 2006):

Elizabeth Balneaves (1911-2006)

Elizabeth, or Betty as she was known to friends and family, author, painter and filmmaker, was born in Aberdeen, the only child of Annie and Alexander Balneaves. She graduated from Aberdeen Art College and married the psychiatrist Dr James McL Johnston of Shetland extraction in 1934. Although they were separated for several years, Jim supported her in her work throughout their married life.

Betty wrote six books, made a number of documentary films, drew many portraits in pastel and charcoal and painted many landscapes, latterly mainly of Shetland and Cullen. In Shetland, which she first visited with Jim in 1934, she is perhaps best known for The Windswept Isles (1977), which she wrote during the 20 or so years she and Jim lived in retirement in the old manse at Bigton in the 1960s and '70s. This was her tribute to the people and the islands whom she always felt had adopted her.

During those years she also made a documentary film of Shetland for the BBC: People of Many Lands - Shetland. Although painting was her first love it was her writing that brought her to a wider public attention, one of the first signs of her literary talent being a poem published in 1945 in Poetry Scotland (2^nd collection), that wonderful series of Scottish poetry books published by William MacLellan & Co.

In the early 1950s Betty travelled alone to Pakistan, particularly to Karachi and the Frontier with Afghanistan , where she stayed for several years, resulting in The Waterless Moon (1955) and Peacocks and Pipelines (1958), both of which received some critical acclaim. Later, she returned to the area with her son, Stewart, resulting in a third book on the area between the Hindu Khush and the Karakoram, The Mountains of the Murgha Zerin (1972) and some unique film footage of this remote area and its culture.

At a later date they returned to the Sunderbunds (in then East Pakistan), this time concentrating on documentary filmmaking. In 1959, between her second and third books, Betty visited the area being flooded (in then Southern Rhodesia) by the new Kariba Dam where Stewart was working. Here she made a documentary film of the effects of the flooding on wildlife - Logging in the Sundarabans, East Pakistan - and wrote the story of a colourful Scottish Game and Tsetse Supervisor called Joe McGregor Brooks entitled Elephant Valley (1962).

Just prior to this trip Betty worked as a publicity officer for the Edinburgh Zoo and as with everything she did, she made use of this experience in her only work of fiction, Murder in the Zoo (1974).

Betty had a great zest for life, travel, cooking, uisge-beatha and good company that continued into her old age, becoming computer literate on her 90^th birthday and spending her next 5 years, right to the end, sending and receiving emails from her family and many grandchildren scattered across the globe. During this time she also began putting together the text for her final publication, her memoirs, which, alas, she never finished. Betty was an only child and it never ceased to astonish her that she had so many descendants. Betty died quietly in Elgin on the 7 ^th November, just eight weeks after celebrating her 95^th birthday with most of her immediate family. She is survived by her four children, thirteen grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren.