Homes with a view to tour for

Pam Townshend and her committee have been working with military efficiency to open the doors to Hamilton's finest homes

Pam Townshend's sturdy diningroom table is laden with piles of paper rather than plates. Everything is neatly assembled, everything bears the insignia of The Fine Homes Tour 2009, the charity event that has been occupying Townshend's time and space for the past year.

The event organiser laughs at the suggestion that her own graceful Tamahere house would be a suitable candidate for the biennial tour of 10 top Hamilton properties. She waves at the table swamped in tickets and maps, and says the office is also under pressure and her garden tends to get a bit jungly during the lead-up to tour day. "Too much to contemplate."

On the surface, the Fine Homes Tour sounds a doddle. It's a good idea for a start, with 10 gorgeous homes opening their doors for a charity fundraiser. Tickets are $60, and for that you get to look inside properties chosen for their architectural design and interior features. Some of them are well known, and have been admired for years, others are hidden gems offering a rare opportunity for a look-see.

You get your map, follow the prescribed route, observe the rules – shoes off, don't touch, no cameras, no kids, don't nosy in the cupboards, don't use the loos, etc – and have a thoroughly pleasant day out.

The logistics of staging it, though, are tricky, a military-style operation of marshalling sponsors, volunteers and willing homeowners, then navigating up to 1600 people through 10 houses spread across town and country. It needs a firm hand on the steering wheel, and Townshend has a reputation as an excellent organiser leading a hard-working committee.

By her own admission this straight-talking ex-pat Aussie "doesn't tend to do things by halves", and this week she's on countdown for the city's fifth Fine Homes Tour that takes in 10 westside properties on November 13. She runs the budget, and likes the idea of raising a substantial amount of money. "We're not going to do all that work for $20,000."

The last tour in 2007 raised $77,500, this year she's hoping to crack $80,000 but needs to sell a few more tickets to do this. This year, the money will be shared by True Colours Charitable Trust and Waikato/Bay of Plenty Cancer Society. Apart from the cost of the traffic management plans the two groups will benefit from the entire amount. All other expenses are covered by sponsors.

Townshend spends countless voluntary hours working on the project. How many hours? She laughs, "I don't think anyone needs to know, particularly my husband".

In her peaceful rural conservatory, she gives a rundown of a few of the major issues and headaches. Some of the homes are invariably in locations not entirely suitable for masses of vehicles, and Townshend's driven the current route many times, sussing out potential problems. Compiling the map is a big task, and this year there are three separate traffic management plans in place to cope with the cavalcade. Tickets are issued with carefully staggered starting points to avoid hundreds of people kicking off at House No1.

Volunteers are stationed in each of the homes to make sure visitors obey the rules as they stream through. Some big houses need up to eight people to staff the upstairs and downstairs, others need three or four.

The selection of homes is crucial to success. Fine Homes committee members Jane Hargood, Christine Couch and Debbie Newdick do this job, and potential properties are gleaned from a number of sources.

Some people volunteer their own home, but this is a rarity. Townshend says most suggestions come from "people who know people, and sometimes people will dob in their friends".

The women start with about 200 possibles; they make a lot of phone calls and eliminate people who aren't interested, or maybe haven't finished their renovations or gardens, or say "next year". They whittle it down to about 15 homes to visit, and make their choices. Townshend says Christine Couch is the tactful person who sometimes has to tell people they haven't made the list.

"We try to have a balance of homes with the `big wow' factor, through to older renovated villas and perhaps smaller, beautifully decorated places."

Townshend has huge respect for homeowners who "work like crazy" to get their homes ready, eliminating every last cobweb and skerrick of cat fur. Floral arrangements and any extra accessories are added the day before and Townshend has heard of families vacating that night to keep everything pristine. One couple slept on their couch to avoid disturbing a perfectly made bed.

Most people, she says, have experienced a bit of de-cluttering as they tidy up for a Sunday dinner or big Christmas gathering. "How would you like 1600 people walking through?"

HEATHER COYNE is remarkably calm about the prospect this week at the inner-city home she shares with partner Mark Winter. The couple's sleek, modern home was designed by architect Ron Sang in the mid-1990s. It has been refurbished by Coyne and Winter, and is now in great shape for wholesale inspection. Furniture, artworks and artefacts are beautifully arranged: "Just don't look in the cupboards," Coyne jokes.

Coyne says they got involved through word-of-mouth, and she's feeling perfectly comfortable about it. "I've been on several of the tours in the past, getting together with my mother and sisters. It's a good day out." The prospect of having their house on the list got them cracking to finish their renovations, "otherwise we'd still be dragging our feet".

Coyne says if she'd had any qualms about opening her home, she wouldn't have done it. She'll enjoy this tour again herself, "but I won't be at my place".

Although there are insurance contingencies, Townshend is proud of the record of "nothing damaged or stolen" at any of the houses. "Nothing untoward has happened, we've never even had to vacuum a house afterwards, everything still looks pristine at the end of the day."

Some people, she sighs, do have the cheek to look in cupboards, and to make critical remarks. "As well as all the lovely comments, you get people who say things like, `that's awful wallpaper'. To protect homeowners from such thoughtlessness, and possibly from the staggering sight of hundreds of people traipsing through their hitherto private oasis, the committee advises them to vacate for the day.

The tours mainly attracted women at first, but the number of men has been growing, nowadays up to 20-25 per cent. Townshend says as well as having a peek inside amazing homes, people gain interior design ideas for their own houses, seeing settings in real life rather on the pages of a glossy magazine.

Each of the Fine Homes committee members is responsible for a house and a team of volunteers on the day, but they manage a quick, early lunch together between shifts where they share a few stories.

Shoes can get muddled as dozens of people shed them at the front door, and one year a woman went off in the wrong pair of boots. They were identical to hers, only a bigger size, and she didn't notice the difference. It left another puzzled woman trying to get her feet into the smaller pair. One year, Townshend ended up with 12 umbrellas that had been left at various houses.

THE FIRST Fine Homes Tour grew out of a conversation between Hamilton friends Christine Couch and Jane Hargood on the way back from a similar event in Auckland. They'd enjoyed it and thought it would be good to have one in Hamilton.

Townshend was roped in to be the event organiser – "it sounded like a fun thing to do" – and the inaugural one was held in October 2003. Couch and Hargood are still involved, as are some other early committee members.

Couch describes Townshend as a wonderful leader, "she just brings everything together, she's good at delegating, and has a great sense of humour. We all feel we couldn't do it without her."

Someone with Townshend's skills and background could be commanding a top salary in business, but she is entirely comfortable with her long career in the not-for-profit sector.

She trained as a school teacher in Melbourne and she got into voluntary work as a new mum with the Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia, the country's leading provider of breastfeeding information and support. She became national president, then in the mid-1980s she met New Zealander Ross Townshend on a management course at the Australian Administrative Staff College at Mt Eliza, near Melbourne.

Ross Townshend was with then with New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Co (forerunner of Fonterra), and Townshend reckons someone at the college thought "we'll stick the formula manufacturer and the breastfeeding mother in the same syndicate".

A personal relationship developed, and Townshend moved across to New Zealand ("to the dark side", she jokes) with her three children to join Ross in Hamilton. They built a home at Tamahere, and Townshend looked for what she'd pursue next.

She became the administrator for the New Zealand Foundation for the Blind in Hamilton, and later returned to Melbourne for a few years when her husband's career took him there. She became Australian fundraiser for Nursing Mothers during that time, and membership secretary for the Victorian Council of Social Services.

Back in Hamilton at the end of 1992, she was co-ordinator for the Hamilton Volunteer Centre, then manager of the re-named Volunteering Waikato. She resigned in 2000 to run the International Year of Volunteers in 2001, and next hooked up with the Fine Homes Tour.

Townshend's had two bouts of breast cancer in the past few years, the first in her right breast in 2001 that required two lumpectomies, chemotherapy and brachytherapy, the second in her left breast 2006 ("just when I thought I was going to get my five-year clearance"). This one was treated with a lumpectomy and scan radiation.

Townshend relates this in her typical no-nonsense fashion. She's worked through these testing times, and now there's more work to be done before the Fine Homes Tour hits the road.

She does it because she enjoys it: "It's nice to know that at the end you've made a decent amount of money that is going to make an impact. Enough to make it count."

Tickets ($60) available from Fine Homes Tour 2009, PO Box 9243, or ph 07 856 2500.