When I was 17 years old, I went into the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) in England and signed on for four years. I was training in photography. The last part of the course, we went up in a plane to do aerial photography. I had the parachute on, and they'd taken away a panel from underneath the nose of the plane and installed a framework with the camera over the top. So, once we reached the right height, the pilot said to me, ‘right, take your parachute off and crawl under here.’ We were operating the camera to make squares on maps. I could see down the sides of the framework all these tiny fields and cars going along lanes, and I felt, wouldn’t it be marvellous to do a parachute jump? When we landed, I said to the pilot, ‘is there any chance we would ever get to do a parachute jump?’ He said, ‘not out of my plane you won't, that will mean we were in trouble.’ The WAAFs weren’t allowed to do it, it was very male-orientated in 1949.

So, I thought to myself, I'd like to do that at some time.

When it was approaching my 80th birthday, I heard about sky diving at Kirra. They said I’d need a letter from my doctor, who is a bit of a comedian, so he wrote, ‘Betty Gregory is perfectly fit to jump out of a perfectly fit aircraft.’ The skydiving boss said to me, ‘you'll have to put this suit on.’ I said, ‘I don't want to wear a suit.’ It was an old one-piece thing. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we don't want your bits flapping in the breeze.’ So, they gave me a big T-shirt to wear over the top. They opened the door and we sat on the edge of the plane, all clamped up together, he tapped me on the shoulder and pushed the two of us out. I yelled ‘Geronimo’; it was great! I loved it. It’s exhilarating, I didn't feel any fear at all. Once the parachute opens, of course, you’re just gently swaying from side to side and the views are magnificent.

I’m not brave, it’s just all good fun.

~

Before Betty and the kids scattered her second husband’s cremated remains, he had given her instructions - ‘remember Betty, look for the 7th wave because that’s always the biggest, and scatter me just after that.’ He couldn’t swim, so he wanted to be placed in the shallow water off the groin in Palm Beach. Betty followed his instructions, but a big wave came right after and washed his ashes all over her legs! ‘So much for that,’ she chuckled, and his kids laughingly said, ‘he doesn’t want to leave you, Betty’.

I’m 80 now. My mother, her sister, and their grandmother all died when they were 85. So between now and then I want to live my life and kick up my heels, because in the past and the recent past, I’ve been very low key and very mindful of actually conforming. I want to be Aunty Mame. I want to go and have a good time, within reason, not hurting anybody but just rallying the troops and getting the most out of this final chapter. These twilight years.

I’d like to lead some courses on numerology to help people my age. I see the benefit in helping keep our minds alert and then - if we gather this information - we then go ahead and align the older person with, I’d like to think, with their grandchildren. If they find good character points in the information that I’ll be projecting to them, hopefully the little ones will tune in and want to know more. I see a gross separation with the older people who have got their life and the younger people have got theirs with computers and everything and all this IT equipment and, so consequently, they’re not getting the opportunity to come together. I feel it’s important, the older people have so much to share with the younger people and the younger ones can keep the older people alive.

So if we can all just go through life being ourselves, without needing to be dogmatic or overrule people, then people respond, and more particularly the little ones.

I like to remain open and stay in the moment and not have expectations.

To be able to see something in others, it means you are that way too. To me, we don’t carry anything special in our pockets. But what we do carry in our hearts is an opportunity to be there as a person of example.

I left a corporate job to go and work in the newly opened Feros Care village in Bangalow in 1997. I was driven and I don’t know what made me do that. I feel very blessed to have been part of the first intake of staff. It was a beautiful place to work. You’d put a doll in the arms of the old ladies who needed someone to hold, and the old guys who couldn’t sleep at night-time, they’d say, ‘I’m waiting for the bus to come, I’m doing the night shift’, so I’d have to go and find the Gladstone bag and give them that. I found it very fulfilling.

Although the ‘sundown syndrome’ when you have to shower them before bed was quite an experience. I’d come out very damp sometimes which we’d all laugh about. I’d say to the staff when there was a full moon, and I think they thought I came from another planet, ‘hey tonight we might have a very difficult night because it’s a full moon and it stirs up a lot of personalities, particularly at this age and particularly if they have dementia.’ And the next day they’d creep up to me and say, ‘hey you were right, no one would settle.’ And through that comment I feel like I actually left a mark there, that people weren’t going to try and jump on the elderly as they’d realised it was just the moon.

I’ve always learnt from the elderly. I’ve met some beautiful people, elegant, proud, well-spoken women that had reached these tender ages where their time was nigh, but they were so beautiful to be around and they wanted to talk and when they were dying and their family didn’t come in (there were a lot of older people who didn’t have family around at this time) there were a group of us, about half a dozen, decided to make up this little group. If someone was lying there and didn’t have people around them and we knew it wouldn’t be long, we’d stay over our shift and hold their hand or just play some soft music. It was difficult but just lovely to be able to do that. I was just in the right place at the right time.

We have to make the elderly and the aged feel part of our community and not feel like they’ve got to apologise for being around, taking up space on the earth.

You can only go through life listening to your heart and the voice within and being guided by that.

I was living in Holland and I needed to get back home. I was very, very sad, very lonely. I was only 22. I got on this old ship, the Waterman, and it was also ferrying people from various other countries that were migrating, like an immigration ship. We got through the Suez Canal and we had to get off the boat. I had Michael, my 22-month-old son on my hip, a bag with nappies and everything in it. When we got to passport control, there was a huge line of people. I was shuffling Michael from hip to hip and juggling my bag. Finally it was my turn. The passport control man, with every other passport, would just give them back almost instantly. With me, he held onto my passport and flicked it backwards and forwards.

Anyway, there was a tap on my shoulder, and this very decent looking young man asked if he could hold my baby for me, because I had to get a couple of things out of my bag for the passport man who kept asking me questions. So I handed my baby to this man behind me, because I thought he was just one of the passengers. Fortunately, there was a lady who recognised me from the ship, and she ran up to me and she said, ‘where's your son?'

I turned around, and all of a sudden it all fell into place. Passport control man was in on my son being taken, kidnapped. I just grabbed my passport out of his hand, threw all my things to this lady. I said, ‘don't move,' and I ran. It was like an airport hangar, and there were people everywhere and I was bumping into people all the way to outside.

They were all dressed in white robes. They all looked the same. There was a road going left, one going right. There were a couple of other roads going in different directions, and for some reason, I don't know why, but I took this particular road and I was literally kicking into people, fighting, falling over them, hitting; a mother's instinct, I don't know. And I saw a little bit of blonde hair flopping. And that was my son.

Had it been even 30 seconds later, I don't think I would have gotten him back. That's the scariest thing any woman can go through. And I often wondered how many other babies were taken from women that were migrating and weren't missed. Because if you weren’t back on the ship at a certain time, the ship would go.

I grabbed the man, I almost pulled him off his feet. I just grabbed my son out of his arms and raced. Raced back. I was in shock. I was in so much shock. And I can understand now, when you see these programmes and you go, why didn't they report it? Why didn't they do this or that? I know why. Because you go into a different hemisphere.

It changed how I saw the world. I didn't trust anymore after that. It made me stronger. I still kept travelling with my children.

I ended up in the Children's Refuge. Catholic. Parents were allowed to come and visit once a month for one hour, which was called Friends Day. We weren't allowed to say Mum and Dad because that upset other kids who did not have a Mum and Dad. So we said we had a friend visiting. After my parents separated, my mother wasn’t allowed to come and visit anymore, because she divorced him. This is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church. I can remember when I was probably 8 or 9, I could see a kerfuffle at the back of the wee playground. My mother had been refused entry around the front and came around the back and asked the kids to find me and let me know she was there. In the meantime, the nuns who were in charge ganged up, and I can remember four or five of them physically manhandling her at the back gate.

My younger brother was in the same refuge, but we weren’t allowed to see each other because we were split into age groups. Eventually three of my older brothers were brought into the children’s refuge. But the good nuns, in their wisdom, didn't bother to tell me or my younger brother. We didn't discover them until later in the dining room, and somebody says, way across the room, ‘you've got two brothers there, and they've been there for six months.’ We weren’t allowed to talk to them because there’s no talking in the dining room, you’d get the cane for that. So while we're shuffling up, going up for another piece of bread, you’d try and say something before the sister would go ‘whack’ around your head. No talking.

That was my life up to the age of 16. It was quite abusive and you got punished a lot, for reasons you didn’t know, beaten up every day for 10 years by the nuns. You expected to be beaten. It made me introverted and more subservient, they sort of broke you. You never, ever talked about it.

In the home, a Polish gentleman was allowed to bring six kids out for a Christmas dinner and I was one of the six. Very nice meal and a nice Christmas present. But none of us spoke because the sisters were there keeping an eye on us. And the poor guy had done his best. When we got up, left the room, sisters were there to collect the presents up because it wasn't fair to other kids, so she took the presents away from us.

So when I got older, partly that experience led me to becoming a Santa at Westfield Helensvale, a great thing. I spent a lot of time trying to get presents to kids. I worked out over the years I spent close to $8000 giving donations. I said six kids at $60 a head plus $60 for mum and dad to give them a Christmas dinner. And with the Salvos and the Smith Family, in their wisdom, just put it into the general homeless fund. I said, ‘that's not really what I wanted, I wanted kids.’ So I was really fortunate as Santa.

I went out and bought six presents to go with the presents the shopping centre was doing, with a special colouring on it, so I know which ones I bought. I got great pleasure handing out six presents that I wanted. That was really good. And I've been Santa for 16 years. You get little four-day old babies come and it's fabulous. You get the photos, Mum brings them back next year and it’s one year on, and it’s the same next year. The same families come back to me every year for 14 years. I even have to print out my roster because they all want Scottish Santa.

But it’s not the kids who ‘want this, want that’ you remember, it’s the little sad occasions. ‘Santa. I'm 15. I'm pregnant, and I don't know what to do.’ Or, ‘Santa, please make Daddy like me’, or ‘bring Mummy back from heaven.’

Sometimes you just have to give the time out. I have to just give memories. Like the child who says, ‘I only have a few months to live,’ I give them happy memories. It also applies to adults, too. Coming along in the wheelchair. I stand alongside the rail so the husband or wife can take photos together for a last time. So, it sounds a great happy time, but these are things you remember.

In the sixties, I was in a really abusive marriage. I used to watch the ‘Go!!’ show and there was this beautiful guy who used to be in a band called The Purple Hearts. I remember sitting there with my daughter on my knee and thinking ‘I'll never be able to have that kind of freedom’. He was so free, I just loved him so much. I snuck out and bought a 45 of their disc. I was only allowed to listen to classical music, so I had to hide it. As the years went by, I was 64. I was on my own, I was really fit, and I was feeling good. My daughter said to me, ‘I had a dream last night that I should put you on RSVP’, and I said, ‘oh, no, no, I'm not going there’. But she did anyway and eventually this man convinced me that we should meet.

He said, ‘I'll have a rolled-up newspaper of The London Times and the password will be the moon shines brightly over the steps in April’. It's Tolstoy. I thought he is either a wanker or a really interesting person. We met, and we just knew we were clicking really well. About three weeks later, he asked me to marry him over a toasted cheese sandwich and a cup of tea.

It wasn’t until I went to see him sing at a jazz club that I realised exactly who this man was. The man next to me was so excited to see him sing, he said, ‘don’t you know who that is? Mick Hadley was the lead singer of The Purple Hearts.'

I went down the aisle with him singing, ‘wild thing, you make my heart sing.'

Up till then my life had been absolutely shit. Mick was a big part of my reformation. I started studying ontology. I really started to look at myself and the victim that I was and how sorry I was for myself, for my childhood. As I was going through that he said he could see me lift, you know, like a veil lift off. We didn't know he was sick at that stage. I think his brain tumour had probably started because his behaviour did change. He just absolutely adored me, and then some really difficult behaviour started happening.

But before he died, he did come back to me because I'd lost him for a year. He was confused, and so the last year was sad, and then he was in palliative care. I used to hop into bed with him and hug him tight, and one day he said to me, ‘I want to go darling’. Then he said to me, ‘there's going to be somebody else in your life and you mustn’t let what we've had stop that from happening’. I said, ‘how could I ever have anybody else in my life?' You know, we only had eight years together, but I had been abused by men all along. And he was the first man who ever told me he loved me.

His daughter hated me. I tried so hard to include her. After his death I got a phone call from one of his fans, and she said, ‘Mick’s been cremated’. I said, ‘oh, no, we're still working on that’. And she said, ‘no, it's on Facebook’. They had had the love of my life cremated without telling me. And then they sent me the bill.

It's never too late. I'm 80 and my life is just beginning all over again. I'm the happiest I've been in a long time. John’s come into my life and he accepts me with all my craziness. I feel free to be that person.

My earliest memory was about  being five years old, riding a tricycle on the veranda where we lived. Funny, that still stays with me.

I lived at Hawthorne, right on the park. That allowed me to have access to a football ground right at the back of my home. So it gave me a big advantage, as far as training was concerned. I suppose I had success at an early age. At 17, I was captain of the A reserve grade premiership side. At that time, Morningside didn't have a senior A grade side. Their top side was a reserve grade side, and I captained this team to a premiership. At 17, that was a bit of a feather in my cap you might say, for captaining players in my team that were old enough to be my father. I was chosen to captain because of my ability, but it must have been some leadership qualities as well. And the following year, after this premiership reserve grade, Morningside were promoted to the A grade, and I captained their A grade side. We didn't do too well. But I went on and won the Grogan medal at that time, similar to the Brownlow in Victoria, which was the best and fairest in the competition. I represented Queensland. I was probably 18 then, and went to Canberra, and Sydney and played in the state football there.

Well, it was an honour to win the best and fairest as it’s a really prestigious award. At 18, I was probably the youngest one to have won it. The following year I won it again. The following year, the third year in A grade, I was runner up. I had a pretty illustrious career you might say, as a younger person.

I wasn't really an outgoing, football type of person off the field, but I had a very good coach in a guy called Clem Ryan, who was a top player himself and a top coach. He actually coached the Queensland team. He instilled in me the white line fever – you cross the white line going onto a football field, you change your personality, you've got to get the ball, and you've got to stop the opposition from getting it whatsoever.

I had a couple of pretty serious injuries early in the piece, the worst was a punctured lung. A clash of body sort of thing and broken ribs, the rib went through my lung. They didn't discover exactly how bad this was at that time. I'd signed up to go to Melbourne to play with St Kilda. At that stage, I was to go on a Tuesday. This was a Sunday game that we played. When I did get injured, they checked on me at the ground and I was in a pretty bad way. I had trouble breathing. They raced me up in the ambulance to hospital Royal Brisbane, and they kept me under observation for a few hours and then thought it was a problem with a muscle injury in my stomach.

They let me go home. And I had trouble sleeping during the night. I still went on the plane trip on the Tuesday and on the flight down to Melbourne, they had to get the plane up over a storm, and the air was very rare, and in those days they weren't pressurised like they are these days. And I had trouble breathing on the way down in the plane. They had me lying down the hallway and all the other passengers thought I was dying. I thought I was, too. Couldn't breathe, got down to Melbourne, rushed to the hospital straight away. They diagnosed that then as a punctured lung and they did a minor operation where they allowed the pressure in my chest to come out, which allowed my lung to come up and start breathing normally again, such a relief. I thought, you know, in the plane trip down I probably might have been in the process of my last breath sort of thing. I thought my career might have been over at that stage, came back to Queensland, only missed nine games, and then started resuming a local competition up here.

I won the Grogan medal that same year that I played only nine games. I probably got best on field for nine games, 27 points. I think it was you got three points for best on field? So I did well when I look back on it to come to that level where I didn't allow bad injury to affect me to any great extent.

Having that injury and experience gave me more determination. That's what I had basically on a football field and probably in life as well. I came from not a wealthy family at all, just a working-class family. But to excel in a sport like that, it was a credit to myself and to my family that I could succeed in something in my life.

I'm Jewish. And my wife's Church of England. My oldest daughter is a Mormon. My next daughter is a Catholic. My granddaughter is Lutheran. When we had the children we told them to choose whatever they like.

We just celebrate, we celebrate with the lot of them. It's incredible. We carry on just as we are now; just talking and laughing and joking. If they want to say a bit they say a bit, and if they don’t want to say a bit then we don't worry, don't bother me.

My mother was Hebrew, was married to my father who was a Catholic.

I've got my beliefs; I don’t need a synagogue. I'll wear a skullcap, but I don't need it. I don't follow the faith. I use it to my own convenience. I enjoy the bits I enjoy, and I don’t do the bits I don’t enjoy. The only thing I believe now is my God, which is your God and everybody else’s. I don't give a damn. And my rings and my jewellery is all done like this, see I don't never, ever fail to let people know that I'm Jewish. Wearing a skullcap is recognition that God is looking at me all the time and I'm looking at God.

I've had a wonderful life; I could not have wished for more. And I think if my mum was still around now she’d be very proud of me. I hope so.

~

Terry proposed to his wife the night that he met her after admiring her lovely feet. 64 years later, they’re still deeply in love. Even if she now has crusty old feet.

Terry and his family moved out to Australia in the late 1970s. They had initially requested Africa, but due to the Rhodesia embargo, their application was turned down. After a row with his wife one night he said, ‘do what you bloody like’ and came home that night to be thrust papers - ‘sign these’. He thought she wanted a divorce: ‘I’d had enough of her, I signed them.’ Then she told him she’d sold the house in one day and bought them tickets to Australia. They were leaving in 3 weeks.

I heard that the Department of Agriculture had a filming department. I went up to see who was running that, and he said, ‘okay, well, I desperately need someone. You interest me.’ Two weeks later I went to see him, and he said, ‘well, I tried to take you on as an associate producer because I could have taught you how to help me run the outfit. But the public service wouldn't allow it because you haven't been producing films. I tried to take you on as the director because I could have taught you that, they wouldn't allow that because you haven't been directing films. I tried to take you on as an editor, but I've got one, and that's my quota. But we've created a job, you might not want it, a trainee editor.’ I said, ‘I'll take it.’ Only occurred to me a week later to wonder what they're paying me for it. It turns out they were paying me much less than what I was getting as a 16-year-old assistant projectionist.

Within six months, I was directing, which was very simplistic. And I was doing half the editing. I was writing the script. I was excited about all that. The only thing I wasn't excited about was this low money.

I went over to Fiji on a contract to make documentary films and set up a documentary unit to train local people. When the British were there, they found that when somebody has elephantiasis, you see a woman with one perfectly huge arm or leg, they found that there’s a secondary disease you get when you're living in unclean conditions, and there's another bug that gets inside you. If it's there for two years, it turns into this secondary disease. So they got every man, woman and child tested, and they worked out a pill to take. It kills off that bug before it gets to the secondary stage.

When I got to Fiji it was starting to show up again, and the problem was that all the healthy mums and dads were either working in the tourist industry or in the cities. In the villages there was grandparents and the grandchildren and the way that Fijians build their big houses, it takes big, strong men to build those houses, and if the roofs start leaking to get up and fix that, it's all very physical work. The government was offering a lot of help to people to help them to clear up their villages and they were not getting much reaction from people, nobody coming to take advantage of it.

So they wanted me to make a film, to show a really bad village and then show all the things we could do to help them bring it up. The script that they wrote on that was good. It covered all the points they wanted to make. I was shooting in the Sigatoka Valley and there's a doctor in charge of that area. He was my contact. I looked at this really bad village where they have all these little pools, and you could see all the mosquitoes breeding in them. They had pigs wandering around all the houses, people were not taking their rubbish very far away. And everybody was still going bush for toilets, and they were drawing their water from a low level, swampy area. So I found another village which had been really set up the way they wanted. I worried that the people in the bad village would die of shame if this film came out. I got hold of the guy in charge of the good village and I open the film with him walking us around the village, showing things that they do; ‘these men go fishing and these men build new houses and the women look after the rara.’ And as the guy is talking, we were looking at everything that he's talking about. I had him walk right up to the camera so that he's in full close up, blocking everything else out. He said, ‘our village was not always like this. I remember when it was a disgrace.’ So on screen, I put the bad village back in the past. The film worked very well. I didn't know how well until I went back to Fiji 10 years later and I had lunch with that doctor. I said, ‘how did the people in the bad village react when the film came out?’ He said, ‘oh, they asked for it to be shown three times, and this year they just won the prize for the cleanest village in the valley.’ I thought that was great. Then I found it was bought by all the other South Pacific countries because they all had the same problem.

So that's when you know the value of doing the job properly.

I found that if you tell a story well, it's the most powerful way of telling the story, and sometimes you see the story from somebody else’s point of view. And then maybe two weeks later you're seeing it on film, and it's like from other people's point of view, and you realise you can cover any point of view of life that you want.

You can use that to show people something.

They were usually in trouble, and I’d take them in. In Mexico I took in a spider monkey, in Malaysia I took in a macaque, just little baby ones they were, and they get to know you. But they’re exactly like kids; they’re moody, bad tempered, jealous, angry, all the traits that kids have. They scream at you. You’ve got to have them on a chain, and they poo wherever they want to, so you have to have a nappy on them so they’re a bit of work. Mine in Malaysia loved swimming. He’d leap off my head, swim through my legs and crawl up my back onto my head and leap off again. And as soon as I wanted to go in, he’d scream at me. It was beautiful. I love monkeys.

I loved Club Med. The concept is super, guests come to your home, it’s not coming on holidays so much. It was started by a guy who was in a concentration camp during the war and he said, “if I ever get out of here, I’d like everybody to get together, whatever nationality, whatever jobs they’ve got, whatever religion, just get together and realise that we can all be….” And that’s how it started. We all wore flowers in our ears, there was no money, we had beads around our necks, simple gear like a sarong and everyone was treated equally. We had good clean simple fun. You know, silly things, you could go on stage and try and dance and sing, you could do anything. It was just fabulous. So I left everything at home and continued working with them for about 22 years.

I try with everything I do. I try my best. I don’t always succeed; I have a lot of faults. I talk too much; I drive people crazy with that. Depends on the day, sometimes I can think, ‘oh I wish I’d done more with my life’ and other days I think, ‘my god wasn’t going tandem out of a plane enough, wasn’t the Olympic possibility enough, wasn’t having two kids, three grandchildren enough?’ I’m lucky enough to have a beautiful house, lovely relationship, and living here we’re all lucky. A lot of it is luck. Life is full of balance. You can obtain it, you can lose it, you can miss out on it, you can find it, you can work at trying to get it, so you have a little go at everything. Eventually you end up with the most balanced life you can have, so you make your own life and there are all these things that come in to throw it off course - but if you’ve got some kind of stability it’s okay. We can’t go through life without the bad times.

It’s just my little world, it’s fairly inconsequential in the great scheme of things. We all think we’re so damned important and we’re nothing. I do have an envy inside me, wishing I’d done more to help others in my life. One of my heroines was a nurse, a lady who never leaves my mind. She looked after me after I had my car accident in Bahrain. She cared so much. I was on my own. The motto of Club Med is ‘happiness is our business’ and I’ve never forgotten that. So I haven’t done much in my life to help other people, but having said that I have made some people happy. I suppose in one very tiny way that is our responsibility, not to hurt people but to make people happy. Having said that, why do I argue so much with my boyfriend when I say I hate to hurt people? It’s such a silly thing, arguing. But we do, don’t we?

My kids aren’t near me, and I wish I had spent more time with them. That is a real wish. I wish I had spent more time with my children, and my grandchildren. But it wasn’t my life for whatever reason.

I think it’s true that we’re not seen (as seniors), we’re not heard, not listened to, I also know in all honesty that some old people can say the same thing over and over, but it is important. We still have a worth; we still have experience on our side. We may not be smart, we might lose our way in a conversation, we might dither a bit, we might sound older, we might not even be as interesting as we think we are, but we have so much experience we can talk about, and we’ve done so much we can talk about and should feel very proud of.

When I think about the marriage, I think the only thing that helped me and kept me in the marriage for 42 years was the children. When I look back on it, I did leave in the end. I wasn’t treated nicely at all, I really wasn’t. I think he was inclined to be very possessive. Even if I spoke to a man, gee was I in trouble. People were surprised when I said I was leaving, because I never said anything to anybody about my life, how bad it was. I just used to put up with it, I suppose. He didn’t appreciate me, I’m afraid. I did a lot for him.

With this virus you can sit and think about things, and this is what I’ve been doing. I thought I was never bothered about it, but I thought ‘gees, I put up with it for all those years.’ He thought I was never going to leave. I was thinking of leaving once before and then I was thinking, ‘if I leave, he’ll probably commit suicide.’ I wonder if he had a bit of bipolar because he could be very frightening. But then I kept thinking, the only way I can leave him is if he finds another lady. Lucky for me, he did. He’d always been a flirt. He used to come home, get changed on a Friday night, and just go back to the Currumbin RSL. I seemed to think he was playing with a group of people there and going to parties and he obviously had women as well, but I didn’t know did I?

Then I found out he was seeing someone, I was still doing his dinners, although I was going to leave. I’d been in my own room for a little while anyway. So, one night he came, I’ve got a photograph of it, and he threw the dinner outside. He used to do bad things. I thought, ‘right, that’s it.’ So, I didn’t make any more dinners. I wasn’t buying anything for the fridge either because he wasn’t giving me any money, but lucky for me I was the only one that used to save money, me, so I had some there. I also waited till I went on pension, so I got something when I was leaving. And that’s why I had to wait 12 months. Then he started having food in the fridge, so I thought, ‘oh she’s making that for him.’ So, she’s the one who got me out. I was so relieved. She helped me. It was wonderful. Although he was with her, he still never thought I was leaving.

I was in love with him still. If he wasn’t a drinker and what have you, it would have worked out. We always went out and he was a dancer too, we loved dancing, and I never really fell out of love until that last day.

I should have married Brian Cooper and not Brian Cox! I met my husband first when I was about 17 and that went for a couple of years. Then we broke up and I met this other guy, Brian Cooper, very nice, he was in the forces. Then the other one came back so I went on a date with him again. Then one weekend I had to stop and think, which one am I going to have? And I chose the wrong one.

I’ve had quite a few boyfriends, about nine. I’ll tell you what it is though with men. They’re all right, and after 3 years, just forget about it and move on ‘cause it gets boring. I don’t fall out with them. I’m still talking to all of them. I’ve just got dance partners, no boyfriend at the moment. There’s not many men around.

Yeah, I got a long-life story. I’m 99 years old.

I got two grandsons and five great grandchildren. And I always say, ‘I don't want to be here by Christmas.’ They say, ‘oh, no you’ve got to have your hundredth birthday next year.’ I say, ‘Oh, no, don't remind me.’

I was born in Czechoslovakia. I worked in Munich for two years. I was an apprentice through a milliner. Then the war started. And they took me out because I was the youngest. I had to go to an ammunition factory for the war effort. I was so upset I cried for a week, from a millinery shop to a factory, that was a big difference. But you get used to it. Then they started to bomb Munich. So I thought I better get away if I can. And I went back into Czechoslovakia, and there was this big factory, as big as a village, and there I worked in the office, adding up the numbers by the end of the month. I was there until three weeks before the war finished. I said to my boss, ‘I'm going home.’ So I went to this railway station and he said, ‘I can't give you a ticket, the Americans are on one side, the Russians are on the other side.’ I said, ‘I gotta get home, no matter what you say.’ So he gave me a ticket. On the train there were aeroplanes flying around all the time. And if something moved, they shot at it and they killed people right on the street. Finally, I got to the railway station. I still had 12 kilometres to go. So I walked home, and every time I heard the plane I snuck under the tree, because if it had seen me move it would have shot at me. I was frightened, I ‘spose. But where I grew up, there were all apple trees along the road, so those trees were big in the summertime and I was always able to stand under and wait till that aeroplane went. And then I walked a bit further, and I got home.

I was about 23 by then. But we were lucky the Americans came where we were living, because about 60 kilometres away, the Russians came in. Oh, they attacked the women. But with the Americans, they weren't allowed to talk to us. After the war, they threw all the Germans out. So my parents had to go and they started again in Germany. I was young. I didn't care very much. I was the oldest in the family. So I went every night across the border from Czechoslovakia to Germany, carrying the sewing machine for my mother, the radio, and I don't know what else; it was expected of me. Just trying to take some things because my mother and father had to go with nothing. Then on the way back one night I got caught, the police were there and they shot at me. But they didn't get me because they were the border patrols. And so we got into a cottage where the police was, and they were painting there. I wasn't the only one that got caught that night. There were some more people there. And you know what we did? We pissed into the paint pots. We all went and relieved ourselves into the paint pots. Imagine the painters coming in next day! I couldn’t go back over the border again with things. When I came back, my mother said, ‘now they got your name. You can't stay. You have to go.’ So, I went and I got over the border, nobody caught me then, because you got used to it. I was in the dark, a big forest there. And so I got over.

I'm very happy the life I’ve had. What else is coming, I don't know.

Plants and things are taking over, they’re so violent in growing and producing seeds. I’ve realised that even some of the grasses are dying, which I’ve never seen before. The grasses have always been next to everything that grows well and some of them are dying out. I checked on them, and there are some little caterpillars underneath eating the grasses. They’re local grasses. I’m really sad about this because if there’s good grass cover underneath, then nothing else grows, it’s ground cover. It’s changing. Some of the weeds, Farmer’s Friend, they’re just coming up everywhere. Their seed clings onto you when you walk through. I know from home, the nettle, you can’t touch them because immediately you get this burning. I like them because they’re also a good pharmaceutical plant, very healthy. They help you also to pee if you have problems. So I’d always kept them there. But now they’re growing faster. There’s lots to learn and look after, but the grasses are missing now because they’re not coming through.

I’ve had a dozen lives because I’ve been in so many places during my lifetime. I was born before the Second World War started. My parents were not with the Nazis. They didn’t follow the Nazi rules, because they’re very dedicated Catholics. My father, because he was one of the hardest workers ever, I’ve probably learnt from him also. He was a laughing person, he was a joking person, he was always making fun and his customers when they came and they told him something, he was always making jokes and they were all laughing. He was the loudest laugher; you could hear him half a mile away. My parents were fantastic. I consider my parents a sort of holy people, very holy to me. He had a market garden, he had glass houses. My father was in one of the coldest places in Germany, it was in the central mountain plateau. I measured temperatures of -38 degrees Celsius, and that was on my birthday in February 1958. My mother was a very skilled florist. Even the neighbouring towns, they came to my mother and father’s place because they were the best. He grew the best plants, and she was making the arrangements.

I was still in eastern Germany. At this time my mother always said, she was clever, and she knew things ahead, ‘they are closing Berlin down.’ That was the only escape route, from East Germany to the West. The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 and I left in 1960, just a year earlier. Ahead of this time, my mother said there will be the wall in Berlin, NOBODY thought there would be. As soon as I came from East Germany to West Germany, I tried to gain more knowledge because I had no high school. I did evening school besides my work at the botanic garden. I could always remember botanical names, hundreds and hundreds and thousands. And I’m very fond of orchids. So I was put in the botanic garden in the care of orchids.

I said, I will dedicate my life to working with the church. I was 25 when I was applying to go to a mission in Africa. They said, ‘we have an assignment for you in Rhodesia.’ There was a Catholic mission run by German nuns and they were special order. So the principal of the place where I stayed was a nun and she also had subordinates and I was working with a garden sister. Of course, I was a good gardener. I was doing it correctly, good work. I grew vegetables, I grew fruits. I had about 5 acres to look after. I did a good job and they knew it because they were getting plenty of vegetables from me. They came 3 times a week to get their vegetables. At one time I had so much, I said to the sister, please tell the Mother Prioress we can sell some of those. The next day she told me, ‘Mother Prioress doesn’t want to sell any.’ I said, ‘then I have to feed the pigs here, I didn’t come here to feed the pigs, I came here to feed mankind, to feed the people.’ I had my first avocado there. It was in 1963. It was almost a shock. I vomited after that; it was a bit too rich. Then I didn’t touch them for 4 or 5 years because I thought I was allergic, but I’m not. It’s one of the best fruits ever.

I talked to the sister in the garden, and she was Bavarian. Bavaria is next to Saxony. I was born on the border of Bavaria but in Saxony. She spoke Bavarian and I spoke Bavarian with her. In Germany we have 20 different dialects. In the north they can’t understand the ones in the south. Now of course, they learn High German, which is proper German, everyone learns it at school and besides they speak their own dialect. We had a good laugh and one of the principal sisters, she was always a cranky one, she objected to me to talk to the lower sister and talk in dialect with her, she couldn’t understand it. So she asked the Mother Prioress to take that sister away. As soon as I heard this, I went into town and I saw Mother Prioress and I said, ‘Mother you want to take Sister Marcia away?’ I said, ‘if you take that sister away, she is like my mother, she is the same year born as my mother in 1908, if you take her away, I’m going. I will leave this place and you can look for someone else to grow your vegetables and fruits.’ And Mother Prioress said, ‘no, we will keep Sister Marcia here.’

I grew so much stuff. My boys came from all over. Their countries were even poorer than Rhodesia. We mainly talked English with them. I taught them English too. I said, ‘you can really get ahead in life when you have another language that’s not your own.’ They learned a lot from me. I was almost revered by my boys. I still call them boys.

I’m from a place called Sheffield originally, which I remember as being in shades of grey, mostly dark grey. I was glad to get away from it. The first move away was to Torquay. That was a very, very pleasant change. One of my strongest memories of Torquay was a place called Babbacombe, on the cliffs overlooking the sea. I was looking down on a sandstone beach, with round pebbles, reddish coloured stone on the cliffs, eye-opening blue sea, sunshine - which was a big attraction, and these little yachts called a Firefly, which were two-person yachts, with red sails. So, the red sails on the blue sea and a white sandstone beach full of pebbles, and sunshine.

When I came to Australia, I developed an interest in the natural environment and developed into a bit of a greenie. I ended up being the president of the Ballina Environment Society for about 20 years. I more or less inherited the position. We took the Ballina Council to the Land Environment Court, I think on about five different occasions, more or less successfully. And in the long term it was successful, part of which is visible around here, because we managed to limit the high-rise development that had taken place in Queensland and was encroaching into northern New South Wales until we developed this buffer area here. There was a councillor, the first green councillor on a Byron Shire Council, who gave her support and assistance. She set an example for councillors to promote the natural environment. And that's why around here, Byron especially, has the height limit of development and the maximum amount of green cover.

I can’t tell you everything that happened in the war, the bombing and blowing up and some of my mates were killed standing in a paddock on a mine and stuff like that. I never got over that. When the English army came in they said, ‘that boy is undernourished, he can go to Scotland’. We went by boat on the North Sea. It was still full of mines. Minesweeper at the front and back of the ship. I was there for one year. I didn’t miss my family. It was all new for me, I was only young. I was having fun and Scotland was beautiful. At the station when we arrived, there was a lot of people there and they all had their arms overloaded with blankets and rugs and every boy got a rug. All different colours. I didn’t know that they were made in Australia. They were so good, those people. We all used to get chocolates. I’d never seen chocolate before. We were all given one block. I ate it one week, and another week, and then I thought, ‘gee whiz, my parents don’t have nothing like that.’ I took chocolate home to my parents. It wasn’t easy. When we were packing up to go home they checked our cases. They found about 20 odd blocks of chocolate in my case and thought it was stolen. I didn’t steal it; I’d saved it up. What they did, when they realised, they gave us some more! There were about 40 blocks. My parents had never even seen chocolates. Thought it was beautiful. My mother thought, ‘oh these chocolates, we’ll give them to the whole village.’

My wife was an Australian girl. I found her when I was 18 and I migrated here. I had a war behind me, I had nothing. My family didn’t want me to go because I was by myself. My family were very religious, and I wasn’t. I was the youngest of the family. I wasn’t allowed to go out to a boxing club, or go out with the girls, and I could only go out with Protestant girls and I didn’t like that. Why? Why? People are just people.

Valerie, my girl, we were talking about rugs and I said I got a beautiful one and I told her about it. She couldn’t believe it. I drew it for her with all the colours. And she said, ‘that was mine.’ Unbelievable. She said ‘I made those at my school in Sydney when I was in grade 3 or something like that. All the kids were asked to make them, bring wool from home and they sent the whole big bundle to England, and it was for children who had nothing’. I said, ‘yeah, I got one of them.’ When my mother died the family was cleaning up and must have tossed the blanket out. But my wife made me one exactly the same. I’ve still got it. It’s on my bed now.

Even now I’m getting older, and I think all the trouble I had with religion. It’s amazing because I see people here and I play the mouth organ for them. I played in Holland when I was very young. I play the normal music but the last 5 songs, I play Christian songs, and some of those older ladies, always in their bed, they can’t get out and talk, and some of those ladies started smiling to me and their tongue was going because they couldn’t sing but I knew they were Christians. You don’t ask people what they are for their religion, but I could tell. All people, when they believe in God, are Christians. You don’t have to be Catholic. You don’t have to be Protestant. Because together they are Christians. The churches, they stuffed it up. They battle the Catholics against the Protestants.

When I look back, Australia has been so good for me. And so beautiful.

I want to understand, because if I understand, then I don't have to be a parrot, do I? Because I understand, I can explain to myself or anyone that's interested in whatever subject we're talking about, what my version of the truth is. And I'm always aware of the fact that it's my version of the truth. You know the story about the major in the First World War. He sent a message along the soldiers in the trench to the messenger at the other end who is going to take the message to headquarters: 'Send reinforcements. We're going over the top.' And the message got to headquarters, ‘send three and four pence, we’re going to the shop.’ So you always have to be careful of what you’re repeating. But if you understand, that takes away that aspect of the repetition, doesn't it?

One of my main things is when people say, ‘I'm only one person, I can't change the world.’ That's a cop out. I'm only one person. But if the job to be done is to move the sand from that end of the beach to that end of the beach, then I'll pick up my grain of sand. You do what you can and it's amazing. When I came here, everybody was using those little 375ml plastic bottles. I was horrified. I've never bought a plastic bottle in my life. I asked everyone, ‘how many bottles do you use a day?’ ‘Oh, two.’ Now, if there's 40 residents plus the kitchen staff, plus the office staff, plus the carers, plus the volunteers, there'd be at least 50 people using two bottles a day. That's 100 bottles a day. I said at the first residents meeting we had here, ‘100 bottles a day. There's 365 days in a year. Feros at Byron Bay are responsible for 36,500 plastic bottles out there.’ That's only one person doing what I can. Within a week we all had jugs.

My mother actually said to me, ‘girls don’t need an education because they get married.’ I was very stupid and married when I was 20. So I was a child, a gawky adolescent, and then a wife; and I had this controlling husband. When I look back, it’s a form of domestic violence, the gas lighting. One day I was raving about my husband always out drinking at my friend’s house and her mother Mrs Fitch came up and said to me, ‘I think you'd like this book.’ In Tune with the Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine. And I loved the book. I took it back to her and I said, ‘that was marvellous, where did you get it’? And she said, ‘oh, the Theosophical Society bookshop’. So I started going to meetings, and I just put my foot down and said, ‘Ken, you've just got to mind the children, I'm going to a meeting.’

My mother and sister pulled me aside one day and said they were very worried about me because they thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown because I was so unhappy. I was married for 12.5 years and I cried every day for 10.5 years. So then I started to stand up for myself, and I told Ken I was going to take a week off, ‘I don't care if you like it or not.’ For that week I sat on the rocks and looked at the ocean, read Krishnamurti, meditated, read Krishnamurti, meditated. I thought, ‘okay, I've got an unhappy marriage. I'm going to have to cope with the situation as graciously as I can, because I've got absolutely no money and four children, and I've got to put those children first.’ So I got home after that week off on the Sunday night, and Ken said, ‘I've done the washing.’ He had washed what was in the washing basket, but there was a dirty school shirt hanging on every door, and there were dirty socks under every bed. But he'd done what was in the basket. Hadn't changed the sheets, of course. And instead of gushing, because if he dried up a teaspoon, I would gush and say, ‘thank you, thank you,’ I said, ‘oh, good.’ And then he said, ‘I bought some flowers.’ I said, ‘yes, they're nice.’ He couldn't make me gush. He couldn't make me cry. He couldn't make me laugh. Couldn't seduce me. I moved into the girls' room. He'd lost all power. He came home on Monday night early, hadn't drunk anything (because he always came home drunk enough you couldn't have a conversation) and he found this aloof woman who was polite, didn't get angry, didn't cry. Tuesday night. Wednesday night he said, ‘I'm going to see Mum tonight.’ Thursday night he came home from work and said, ‘I'm leaving.’ And I said, ‘oh, are you?’ and in my heart I'm saying, ‘thank you, God.’ I was 31 years old, 4 children. I was so happy. It was honestly, as I sit here now and I'm 93, that was the best day of my life. It was the day I became me; when I was no longer a child, a gawky adolescent, a wife - I was me.

Best day of my life was getting married. First met on a blind date at Luna Park. Only Betty wasn’t my blind date. A fellow I played tennis with; he was her blind date. After that night, my date said, ‘Betty’s been asking about you.’ So Betty and I got together and that was it. We just clicked. We got 54 years together. We’d been lovers a long time before we got married. Well, a couple of years. I must have made love to my wife a thousand times. She never knocked me back once.

She raised my three boys on her own. I was working long hours with my father’s foundry. I helped him out for 17 years. Heavy lifting. Oh, worst job in the world. I’ve never been strongly built; had two shoulders operated on, broke me back twice, two spinal operations, back in the foundry doing all the heavy lifting again because I had a steel brace on me back, straps over me shoulders and under my legs. Doing all the heavy lifting, knew I couldn’t hurt myself. Never had a bad back since. It’s incredible. Wouldn’t advise anyone to do it too often.

My father, till the day he died, couldn’t write. Couldn’t answer the phone, he couldn’t write down a message. I think that’s the proudest thing I ever did, helping my father. He was a brilliant moulder. He was a wild man. He wouldn’t go to school. It took him all this time just to scrawl his bloody name on a cheque.

I had two women; two wonderful women attracted to me. I think that I must have had something. Reliable, honourable. I was never much of a talker. No personality really. Yet I had these two women. My wife died 18 years ago and then I had Val Coy, she had a personality. You’d put her in a room full of strangers and she’d charm them within 5 minutes. She passed away too.

I welcome it (death). If I die tonight in my sleep, it’d be a good thing… I get depressed sometimes on my own. I want somebody special with me… What I miss most is getting into bed with a woman, cuddling up to her.

... I'll be around, the Government owes me too much money.

I’ve had a very interesting life, matter of fact. And it’s still going. Hasn’t stopped.

I’m the father of skipping in Australia.

I was on holidays in 1975. I used to teach Phys Ed at The Southport School here for 21 years, and I thought, 'what am I going to do in the holidays?' I thought 'skipping might make it interesting.' I went to the manager of the shopping centre in Gosford, and I painted a pretty picture. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I said, ‘this is the thing that kids are interested in.’ I was amazed how many people turned up. I used to put in an hour every day and a big championship on the Saturday morning. I said, ‘I might go for a record,’ and the TV stations started to contact me, newspapers. I thought, ‘this is crazy, all I'm doing is skipping.’ I appeared on some midday show and then I broke a couple of records and one day I got word from the Guinness Book of Records. They said, ‘we would like you to go to Tokyo. We're having the Guinness Olympics.’ I was invited over there to perform, all expenses paid, in a beautiful hotel. I thought, ‘this is crazy, better athletes in Australia than me and here's me in a luxury hotel.’

I thought I wouldn't mind going over to Singapore, so I went over there to see the people at the place like our sports institute in Australia. They said, ‘we’d like you to put on a show.’ I went to a school, put on a show, and they said, ‘oh, yeah, this is good.’ I've been invited back to Singapore a few times to perform, one time at a stadium in front of 10,000 people. All of this because I had nothing to do one Christmas holidays! Now, skipping is one of the most popular inter-school sports.

I went touring around Australia, visiting schools, and yeah, it just snowballed. I still can't get over it. School kids go crazy over it. I used to say to the teachers, ‘now, look at these kids. If you said to them, we're going to run four laps around the oval, you hear grumbles. Now I've gotta tell them to have a rest.’ And they were amazed also, because they’d never seen anything like it where the kids didn't want to stop.

I put a show on at World Expo 88. I couldn't believe it. I thought, 'this is crazy.' It's something I just thought of. And then it snowballed. Everybody wanted me. I couldn't believe it, you know? Everybody thought, ‘oh, that's only a kids sport’, but it's better than jogging, and you don't have to leave the house. I used to train while watching TV. It's been proved, five minutes of skipping is equal to a lot of running.

When I was five years old, one day I woke up in the morning and I couldn't move my left leg. Mum thought I was trying to squid out on going to school. She said, ‘no, come on, get out of bed.’ I said, ‘I can’t,’ and I was in pain. So they called the Doctor, and said, ‘he’s got paralysis’ and they sent me to a specialist hospital. I was in hospital for about six months, and I remember the doctor saying to my dad, ‘he'll never walk again,’ and, being five years old it didn’t seem to worry me much. Dad got sick and tired of going from Parramatta to the hospital, so he said to them, ‘I'm taking him home, this is no good, he's not getting any better.’ They said, ‘well, he won't walk.’ And he said, ‘we'll see about that.’ He put me on the floor when I got home because I was only in bed all that time and he put money in front of me and I was after this money. He said, ‘it’s yours if you can get it.’ I'm after this money and he put it further some days and before long I was crawling around everywhere, and my leg was coming good and he could see that. So he put money on the edge of the table. He said, ‘you get up there and it's yours.’ So I'm after this money. I can still remember it. I grabbed the money. So he made it further away and he got me to walk, you know, no medical experiences, but he said, ‘you’re no good in bed.’ All I remember is getting this money. I thought this was a good racket.

My religion is fitness. I train every night, I do weights, sit ups and squats and everything for half an hour without a stop. Sitting still won't pump any blood to your brain or get your immune system working. Only thing to do that is physical activity. And exercise is the thing.

You don’t stop exercising because you grow old, you grow old because you stop exercising.

I don’t ever show my birth certificate, it’s got ‘adoption’ on it. It doesn’t upset me now, it used to, but now it doesn’t bother me. I’ve always said that wherever you move to is your home and that is where you expect to be and you don’t go backwards, you always go forwards. I’ve never looked back.

I had a wonderful marriage. I was lucky there. I was in my late 20s when I met my first boyfriend. We were getting married and then I discovered that he had another girlfriend. That really hurt me. But I got through it. With a struggle. I can remember I threw my engagement ring at him and told him to get out of my life altogether and then I got rid of everything that I’d bought for the house. I just gave it all away. My dad said, ‘are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ and I said, ‘no, but I’m still going to do it.’ Then I went out and bought a motorbike. I really rebelled. And then I met my husband to be. And I think I put him through a tough time to make sure. Even to the day I got married, I sent my brother into the church to see if he’d actually turned up.

~

It was very tough (World War II) because you spent most of your times in the air raid shelter. You went to school and as soon as it finished you were straight into the shelter and stayed there till you were picked up at night. We had some fun. It was something we grew up with. We had a military base nearby. We had our windows blown in almost every day (from bombing). Dad would put the new ones in and the next day they’d be gone again. A lot of the houses down our road were flattened. We went out one day, Mum and I. I looked up and said, ‘oh look mum a plane, I can see the pilot’ and I was waving to him. And the man at the chemist shouted, ‘lay down on the floor’ and it was a German plane I was waving to. I didn’t realise. I was just so excited to be able to see the pilot, because you couldn’t normally. They were machine gunning people if they saw anybody along the road there. It was frightening. We also had a prisoner of war camp near us as well. So you didn’t know what was happening there. All sorts of peculiar things happening around you. They were allowed out and able to walk around. Rationing was very tight. Dad always made sure he had stuff planted so we’d never go hungry. I came through it. I’ve come through everything that’s happened to me. I think I was just lucky. Unless you really have been in war, and seen what damage it does, you don’t really understand it.

You’ve got to join in things and be happy with what your life is. I think that’s the most important thing. You’ve got to take life as it comes. No good sitting back thinking, ‘I’m a poor widow’, or ‘I’m a poor pensioner’, it doesn’t get you anywhere, we all go through those stages. We all have different things in our lives. Some are good, some are bad.

It’s nice to tell your story sometimes.

I was born in 1932, so I’m pretty aged now. But I’ve still got a lot of strength and life in me yet. So I’m not about to go upstairs, not yet.

I had a wonderful mother and father. They loved horses. My sister, she’s 7 years older than me and she never communicated with animals, so we never had an understanding between us. But I loved her just the same. I was always the horse mad one. Horses became my life. I loved the horses so much; I had such a great time riding around with them. Not all horses, but you’ll get an odd one here or there, and they have a rapport with you, and they want to please you. Horses knew what I wanted before I even knew myself. I used to love the racing. It’s a funny thing, the horses love racing too. I used to hop on them bareback. Always felt I had such a closeness with the horse and anything the horse could do - I wanted to be part of it. Horses always understood me, whereas human beings didn’t. Going along on a horse, it’s a funny thing how you can lose yourself. And you feel as if you’re racing in heaven.

When I got married, he was a lovely man my husband, but he didn’t last long, God took him away. My two children, after taking a few breaths, they passed away. That hurt a lot. The horses replaced a lot of the hurt inside me. Horses seem to know when you’re sad. They’d walk up and they’d look at you with those big eyes and you could put your hand out to them and feel life inside of them. I’ve found the horses seemed to sense I was sad. They’ll move towards you just that little bit, and touch you just that little bit, and you feel they understand. I recommend anybody that needs to have a time when they can’t communicate with other humans, go to the animals, because horses and dogs will help to take that feeling away from you. That’s happened to me a number of times.

I believe that we meet up with certain people in our lifetime again. A lot of people don’t think there is a heaven, but by almighty God, believe me there is a heaven. Going back in time there was an accident, and they say I died. And I don’t say I didn’t die. But during that time, I suppose I could describe it as a wonderful crossing. When you’re in the crossing, you can sort of communicate with the dead, the past people who have been in my life. I know there is an afterlife. I know it’s very hard for the human soul and human nature to accept it.

You’re born on this earth. Don’t lose faith; many things will happen during anybody’s lifetime that will make them doubt it, but if you don’t hold onto faith, you’ve got nothing else. We're all going to die. We have to take the time to talk to Him and form the connection. God isn’t a thing or a human being, God is just the world

My uncle owned a farm in the western district of Victoria and my brother and I used to go up there on holidays. I loved the farm, I loved animals, things like that. I left school in 1945 at the end of the war, and my father advised me to get a position on a small property first. We looked around and someone wanted a Jackaroo type chap that would live in the homestead at Rylstone up near Kandos. I was there for about 12 months. This was just a few cattle, this property, and they had a lot of pigs. That's where I learned to drive a truck at 15.

I got the desire to be on a bigger property. Dad knew of a man called Arthur Vickery that owned properties around New South Wales. He interviewed me and rang the next morning and said, ‘we'd like you to start on Grong Grong station, it's down on the Riverina near Narrandera.’ It was 22,000 acres. They had cattle and grew a lot of lucerne. I had quite a lot of experience there in learning to ride a horse properly. They give everybody their own horse when they go down there. I lived with the manager and his wife, and I was given Lola, a very tall mare. It was about 20 hands, about six ft just up to the bottom of the neck. The horse and I got on very well together. The Grong Grong Cup was raced every year in a little event. I approached a small bloke, a station hand, and said, ‘what about you being the jockey? We'll get another chap, Jack Cassidy, to help me train Lola.’

We used to train Lola every morning about six weeks before the cup, and the jockey said, ‘she's in great form’. The night before it rained, and it rained, and the next morning it was still raining. Lola, being a big horse, had big feet. Some say the size of a manhole cover. But of course, a horse with big feet does well in the wet weather, it's got a fair grip. The race started, and Lola got away to a reasonably good start. She went right around the course and won the cup! A station horse won the cup!

It was unbelievable. It was only a little gold cup. I said the jockey should keep it; he’d done all the hard work. To win the Grong Grong Cup with a station hack, it was a pretty big achievement, really.

I was there for over 12 months. I enjoyed every bit of it. Then my uncle had a heart attack. The family said, ‘we'd like you to leave Grong Grong and go and look after your uncle's farm.’ I was there for about 14 years. Derrinallum was the place and there was a mountain, Mount Elephant, with all the plains around it.

I bought a motorbike and nearly killed myself. I was here in Derrinallum and we went to a show. I took a pillion passenger and another friend of mine also took a pillion passenger. We stayed for the night session and came home. My mate’s bike got a puncture, so he had to leave the bike. The bloke that owned that bike came on the back of me. There was me, the pillion bike and pillion passenger, and another bloke. The other bloke had to find another way home. We're going along the Camperdown to Derrinallum Road, and my lights gave out. It was a moonlit night. I thought, ‘well, I've got to get home.’ So we drove along, it’s only a two lane sort of thing. I could see whether there was a cow on the road or not, with the bright, bright moon. I'm doing probably 50 miles an hour because I could see. And you won't believe that there was another motorbike without lights coming the other way! I was lucky I was in the middle of the road. He was on the wrong side of the road. His handlebars hit me there, see that lump? Broke bones and twisted the handlebars back, and I was wobbling off. We didn't go off, but I heard him slow up and then he took off for his life. So I don't know who it was. But I had broken bones there and we had to go home very slowly. We weren’t doing 50 miles an hour after that. But can you believe two motorbikes at night-time without lights?

I go for a walk: ‘Oh, Nina.’ ‘Hello.’ ‘How are you?’ ‘How does it feel to be a hundred?’ ‘I can't believe you are already over a hundred!’ I enjoy my life. I have so many friends that before, they were just acquaintances. But now they're all friends.

I was an extrovert, I think, from the time I was born. You know how when you are at a party and someone says, ‘come on, Nina, dance.’ I danced. I danced all my life. I remember all girls hated me. Because I would come, I would look through all the boys, and I would choose one for the night. I would look at him and all of a sudden he would look at me too. And then we would spend the whole night dancing, dancing, dancing, till the night is over.

My husband, he was a good dancer. He was Italian. That's why I chose him I think. I needed a good lover and a good husband. And he was just that, you know. We danced for money at different functions: Nina and Omero. They always played tango. It was a show-off. The dresses! I spent all my money on the dresses. Every time, I would have to be dressed in something extraordinary.

I enjoyed my life. I worked very hard, very hard.

I gave life to others. I cured those who were incurable. Usually, I did it in 10-14 days. It all depended on how bad you were - if you were just about to die, it would take longer. Then you'd be free of everything. You’d start the second part of your life.

My father thought that we were here to cure asthma. It’s been over 100 years, that's why I will never forget it - because his idea is the same age as me. So I feel it's mine in a way, my baby too. I know because I love it. And whenever I see someone who's sick, I immediately want to help. Why suffer when you could be well and happy? I could give you a new piece of life. No suffering and a fulfilling life. That's what I do. There are a lot of things you need to do. It's not that easy because you have to give up a lot of things but the reward is that you'll be completely well and happy and you can do what you want in life. That was my ambition, and that is my achievement. That gives me satisfaction in life. My father was a good healer, and so was I. He was very handsome, a good man with a good heart. We were known as the people who cured the incurable. Between us we cured maybe a few thousand people - not hundreds, but thousands.

Even now, when I go for a walk, I talk to people. At the park they have benches, you know. Benches, I discovered just accidentally, are wide enough to lie down. So I start pressing on you, opening the chest, because the main thing is to open the chest, the main thing is to breathe. Learn how to breathe. My clinic was different because I talked to the clients. I gave them the will to live. I gave them a sample of how good it is to be alive. And I cured the incurable.

For my 100th birthday, a couple of people that I had cured in my lifetime came along and did testimonials. One man, I'm so glad he found me, wrote me a beautiful letter. He became a very good dancer and not only dancer, he became famous. He became somebody. ‘Look, I wouldn’t have achieved this without you.’ He would have been dead, if not for me.

At one stage last year, all of a sudden I felt a big clump in my heart that stopped my breath. And I was clinically dead. I asked the doctor afterwards, ‘What should I have done? Ask for a nurse? By the time the nurse came, I would have been dead already.’ The doctor said, ‘Then go and put the medication under your tongue.’ ‘But it is in my shower room on the shelf. By the time I get hold of that… What else could I have done?’ He said, ‘Die.’ I said, ‘I don't want to die.’ I had known exactly what to do with my patients. I opened their chest. I pressed on their chest. As long as I get the oxygen in - because oxygen is the only thing that will keep you alive. And I was standing there, I was not afraid, not afraid at all. So I pressed, pressed, I only hoped that I would have enough time to open the chest, and I pressed, and pressed, and pressed, and then - click. It's true and I'm alive. I resuscitated myself.

There were wars. My life was sometimes like starvation. Nothing. I mean up and down, up and down. And I think that this trained me very, very well. Because I can be anybody, can be anything, my body can survive on just a crust of bread.

Think what you want to make the goal of your life, what you want to be, and never give up. There is always somewhere that is opening, and you may as well be healthy. Breathe nice, because by breathing my father's method you get enough oxygen to keep all of your body working. And when your body can work 100% well, you do the best you can.

I hope you realise that it’s difficult for me to remember. You know what gets me, I say to somebody, ‘I’ve forgotten’, and she says, ‘don’t worry I forget everything too’, and that’s the next line. They’re being kind to me.

I was a teacher. I taught kids with learning disabilities. And that’s what I had, basically in the end, a real problem with remembering who I was. That’s recent. I’ve forgotten so much, I really have. Now, I’m not terribly much in control of my memory.

I remember working with kids with learning difficulties, and one of them sat there playing with this floppy bit under my arm and laughing all the time. Isn’t that funny? I thought, ‘ok well you go for your life darling; I’m not going to fight you about it.’ I didn’t worry about it. So what. It was a reality. I think laughing is good for your health. Why would you want to be sad all the time? Laughter is a very good medicine. It’s honest.

I had a horse called ‘Gonoff’, he was a racehorse, he was always ‘gone off’. He was determined that he was going to take me where he thought I wanted to go, which was a wallaby or kangaroo. He had it all worked out. I would just sit on his back and he’d take me there. I was just there for the fun of it all.

There were some blokes who were actually invading our house out in the bush…. Sorry, this is not working out, I’m sorry. My memory’s shit. As I keep admitting.

I’m an environmentalist from way back. So was my mum. Jackie, one of my daughters, is an environmentalist. I think the mayor of Redcliffe was glad to hear I had gone. I was always stirring the pot. What right have we to carry on as though we can make all the decisions about the planet? The environment is fundamental. This is a planet which we are in the process of wrecking. Somehow, we have to take responsibility. Individuals can make a noise. Whether we will win, I don’t know. The next generation will realise where we’re going. Extinction. We can let the planet extinguish or we can battle for it. We’ll just wait and see what happens.

Growing up, I was always interested in music. Having learned to play the violin and being in the school band, it was a natural progression for me to want to play in an army band. In 1949, I joined the army as an electrical apprentice. I wanted to learn a trade, but I knew that everywhere, every regiment in the Australian Army had a band, that was a must. But Balcombe didn't have one that year down there, but the year after I went down there they started a band up, which was great. They got the band master from Mornington District Band, and he came and taught us how to play the various instruments. I played the drums and I wanted to do something else, because drummers didn't have much to do when band practise was on. So I took on the brass instrument, B-flat bass, and I learned to play that. And that got me going more in music.

I just like music - it doesn't matter what it is. I can play the mouth organ and everything. When I graduated from Balcombe, I was sent to Duntroon Royal Military College, and I was there for four years. In 1954 the Queen came out and visited. Sir William Slim was Governor General in Canberra at the time and he said, ‘haven't you got your own band here?’ Within 6 months they set up the School of Music and I joined them. It was fantastic. It was just like clockwork, or a jigsaw puzzle fitting together, music followed me. After I graduated Duntroon I went to the Royal Australian Engineers at Casuala in Sydney and they already had a band there. I'd heard of it, and within a few ANZAC Day parades, the bandmaster from Duntroon was also posted to Casuala. He recognised me, walking around, ‘Roy come and play with us in the band, we’re short of a drummer.’ So I joined the band and got the red suit and white hat and it was fantastic. We played in a few ANZAC Day parades and I was very, very happy to do that.

In 1960 the Commanding Officer said, ‘Roy, get yourself a transport, you're going to Japan,’- which was great news, because that was the place to go after the war when everything had settled down. I said, ‘what for?’ He said, ‘you are going to learn to sail a landing ship.’

They put us on a Qantas flight and we flew to Tokyo and then down to Yakoshka. That's where the LSMs (Landing Ship Mediums) were. There was a workshop there and they were doing up these four LSMs. Two they had already done and they were back in Australia. We had to learn how to drive the other two in a couple of weeks and sail them back. It was the happiest time of my life. Good mates, which is the main thing, the weather was great. The food was fantastic. We were staying at the American Naval Base. The Yanks really turned it on for their servicemen. It was terrific. We were getting double pay because once we got on board the ship, you get double pay. A lot of people don't know that.

We had to learn how to drive the LSM and sail it back. They sailed across the Pacific Ocean, go up on the beach, drop a kedge anchor a couple of hundred yards behind. Go up on the beach, open the bow doors, let the tanks go, and pull themselves off the beach with this kedge anchor. There were 30 of us to each ship.

On the way back we left Yakoshka and sailed through the inland sea in Japan. Down to the South China Sea. First of all, we called into Sasebo, one of the small islands southeast of Japan, down to Subic Bay in the Philippines near Manila, and then to the capital of New Britain, Rabaul. Then down to Brisbane and then into Sydney, one of the best times of my life.

Every morning when I get out of bed at three o'clock, I jump on the revitive machine. I go to sleep about 6/7 o'clock. It's just a habit. And I jump on the machine for half an hour and turn on the classical music. The revitive machine opens up the veins in the body, opens up and gets the heart going. The classical music opens up the brain, gets the brain thinking. So that's a good start to the day. I like it, I do it every morning

I was born from a rich family. We started the ‘Metro Meat Company’ in 1938. I’m seven years of age. Then the war came, and we were supplying meat all over the world, plus the Americans and the Australian Army, and it made us very wealthy.

We had to work. You had to prove yourself. That's why I'm like I am today. We had to do more work and better work than employees or anybody else and live up to our name. I did everything. The dirtiest, stinking, rotten job to start with. To slowly getting up higher, and along came 1980. One of Alan Bond’s mates secretly bought shares here, there and everywhere in our company and made a bid and bought us out, a rogue entrepreneur. When he gets a company, he sees that it can be cut, slashed, ruined and burnt and he can get out and take what he wants. Regardless of the employees or anything else, they just grabbed everything and went. It was disastrous. But we were taught never to sit back and take things. There's always an opportunity.

There was a man that came from the juvenile prison. He was a head guard. His son was a great athlete, and he said, ‘wouldn't it be good if we could teach criminals to appreciate sport and bring it out of them and encourage em?’ So, I did it. We had a lot of success with it, seven or eight years, then we had a change of government.

We were teaching them physical fitness, athletics, they went for AFL big time and cricket and running, gymnastics and all that. Then somebody started a boxing tournament. Amateur boxing and they were good at that.

If you succeed with one or two, it's okay. You've done something, but the rest are institutionalised for the rest of their lives.

A couple of the big crims that had the muscle said, ‘you give us a packet of cigarettes every time you come, and we’ll make sure you're well protected, that nobody hurts you’. I had to look after my back. Some of them wanted to make a name for themselves. I was nervous a few times. Some of these juvenile criminals have murdered, raped, bashed.

There was a couple of rogues (kids who had left prison) who found out where I was working and they stuck their head in the door and they said, ‘hey, Big Al, are they all paying their bills? We could collect the money for you’.

Started off, I'm going to reach 95. It's only time. There’s plenty of time to reach 95. But now I want 105. It's getting so easy to do. I do yoga three times a week, Pilates exercises, and weights. Good super-duper diet, Japanese diet, and I’m a vegetarian.

I've got a thing in my mind now for longevity to live as long as I can, and clean, and live independently and with my own ability. And try and set that example. I got men 18 years younger than me that think I'm bloody marvellous. They are either overweight or too lazy to do things. I don't tell them, but I'm setting examples for them to do things properly, to go on. I believe that we're going to have thousands and thousands of people go over the 100 mark in the next generation. People have got to get it into their mind that just sitting around is not enough. You must move; dancing, tai chi, exercise, yoga, simple exercise. I learned a lot about visualisation from athletics coaches, 50 years ago. Visualise you're doing it, act it, think it, sleep it.

One of the most important things is ‘S.E.X’; but not just any sex, it has to be good’.

My father was big business, and I just carried on, I followed in his shadow. He was a magnificent man. Never raised his voice, never spoke anger. And everybody said that he was a beautiful dresser. ‘Are you going to be like him one day when you grow up?’ So, I did. He was a good looker, well behaved, didn't drink much. Smoked a lot because he was a World War one man. He said ‘when you leave home, think of who you are. You've got a name to think of son, be proud of it’.

I still get compliments, one or two a day.

All the girls at the clubs know me because of my well manners and good dress. And I always treat them right. And the bus drivers know me because of the way I dress and look and behave. A gentleman has good manners, keeps themselves healthy, think healthy and clean. Respect other people's views. Don't force it. Don't force your view on them. And don't talk about politics or religion.

I was in a family that was go, go, go all the time. We lived in the Cross (Kings Cross, Sydney). My mother had a B and B (bed and breakfast). She knew everybody in the Cross - Tilly Devine, Katie Leigh (famous Australian underworld figures) . She was on the good side. Tilly Devine used to talk to us. I’ve seen her chasing blokes down the road with tomahawks, because that was her business. They were the days. I can truthfully say I never had any dealings with her at all because my parents just wouldn’t let it be. My parents got me away to sea. The main thing was to get me out of the Cross so I wouldn’t get mixed up. It was good growing up in the Cross. I wasn’t allowed to get out of line. Mum was getting people out of jail all the time. She’d feel sorry for ‘em and fight for them. There’s many a time at her place when she’d say, ‘will you come around and support me, I’m having trouble with so and so. I don’t want you to throw ‘em out’… and she’d throw ‘em out herself! She was a tough cookie I’ll tell you what, she’d be as tough as Tilly. We lived in Claremont Flats. My next-door neighbour was Dame Mary Gilmour, the woman on the $10 notes. I used to do all her odd jobs. She was a wonderful person. She used to do a lot for the labour party. It kept me on the straight and narrow.

I was a bedroom steward in my seafaring days. I was on well-known ships like the Westralia, the Wanganella and the Bulolo. And I ran a dining room until I met my wife. Best 60 years that I had. Any day we were together was our happiest day together. We just blended. We clicked. I never said a bad thing to her. I get a bit upset now. She was just wonderful. I didn’t want to play or muck up because she was such a good woman. She loved cooking. She loved looking after me. You couldn’t ask for anything more. We had a wonderful life. I couldn’t say a bad thing about her. We had three children. A daughter and two sons. All in their 60s now and the two boys aren’t married. One of my sons in Sydney, he lives on the same street as his partner, and they’ve been together 30 years. Something must be working.

I never drank, I never smoked, and I never gambled. But I was never a dud. I’ll tell you what I did love doing, that was dancing. I like Latin American. But I’ve got no power in my legs now, I can’t do a darn thing.

You’d be surprised the number of people who love this hat. My daughter doesn’t like it. They often stop me and say, ‘never get rid of that hat.’ So, I wear this hat all the time.

We’ve got some wonderful women in here. Now I forget their names. I call the girls all ‘dear’ and ‘love’ and ‘my honey’, but I don’t mean anything by it.

The average person, if they can say to me, ‘g’day mate’, that’s all you’ve gotta do. I like to feel I’m somebody. I’m not just a nothing.

I wanted to join the army and be a medic when I left school. But there weren't females in the service then. So I got a first aid certificate, and a home nursing certificate in 1957. The Voluntary Aid Detachment was formed in Murwillumbah, so I joined that. I did volunteer work in the hospital in between milking’s. I loved what I did. In 1973 I had a friend in the ambulance service and he wanted me to become a trainer, so I taught my first class in 1973. I was made a volunteer trainer in January 1974. So for 48 years I've been a volunteer trainer with St John’s.

I taught a class, this is way back now, 40 plus years. And Robyn McEwan was the person in the class and she stood up and she said, ‘Fay if I've got to do that I can’t’. I said, ‘yes, you can’. ‘No’, she said, ‘I can't do that CPR’. I said, ‘you will otherwise the patient will die’. So next week she's in front of the butcher's shop and this little four-year-old darts across the road and gets hit by a 4WD. She's there, and she can hear me saying, ‘you can do it. You can do it’. She went over and he had arrested. Robin started the CPR and she got him going. The ambulance arrived, picked him up, on the way to hospital he arrested again. They picked up a doctor who said, ‘we won't take him through to Murwillumbah, he needs to go through to Brisbane’. He arrested again on the way to Brisbane. They got him going. He spent three months in Brisbane Hospital, and he had to learn to walk and talk again.

Recently I was teaching a St Joey's class, South Murwillumbah, this primary school lot, and at morning tea we were talking. I was saying how important it is for everyone to know first aid, and when I told this story the teacher said, ‘hold it, do you realise you've got Nigel’s son in your class’? See, the father was in Brisbane as a four-year-old boy, and now, it's amazing, he’s married and he has two children. When we went back into the classroom the teacher said, ‘Bailey, do you know what happened to your dad?’ He said, ‘yes, he got hit by four-wheel drive and he died’. And I said, ‘Bailey do you know who I am?’ He said, ‘you’re the lady who saved him’.

I took on the first aid in primary schools and trained over 6000 students at 27 different schools in the community, all over the Tweed valley. I was giving back to the community. I co-formed that St John Ambulance Brigade here in Kingscliff. I became its first superintendent, went to all the big events, sat on the football field for about 10 years being the first aid officer.

My proudest moments were being made a commander of the most venerable order of St John of Jerusalem in 2004, to wear the mantle of the order, the second highest honour, and to go on a re-enactment as an army medic of the first World War recruitment drive in 1999. We marched for 14 days from Parkes to Bathurst. We followed the marchers. 32 marchers. They marched to the beat of the drum at 120 paces per minute.

We walked 97 km. Each night we would pull up and set up our first aid post on the side of the road. There we’d look after the injured and then we would have a camp concert. As I've been a soloist all my life. I could sing. I became known as ‘The Rose of no-man's land’. I marched with those guys into Bathurst, cried all the way, because we were going home next day. Those guys that marched in 1916 went to war.

It was what I wanted to do all my life, and here I was being an army medic.

I’m still growing up. I like the view. To see how things are turning out.

I had five different careers. I always used a job as a means of getting to a place that I wanted to live. I moved to Australia to get warm. I was born in Ottawa, Canada – but I lived everywhere. Winter of 1972 we had 66 consecutive days at 60 degrees below zero. So I made the decision to leave. I borrowed books from the library and it seemed to have the lifestyle I wanted. I wanted to sail and my dreams came true. They advertised for people to train as crew members, for racing. I put my name down and got selected. I went on the best boats with the best captains and crews and got taught all the skills. I just felt at one with the boat. Had some fantastic races. The best race was the first one I captained. I took the helm and commanded the boat and I just nailed it. It went perfectly. I was part of the America’s Cup the year they won. Australia II. I was the manager in charge of Promotions and Advertising.

I was asked to present Alan Bond with the trophy for winning the challenger series at Port Philip Bay. ‘Just hand him the cup and go out for a beer’. Luckily I wore a sports jacket because when I got there, there’s about 300 people behind the tables and TV cameras and radio microphones and I had to get up and give a speech. I hadn’t done any homework. I started to talk and all of a sudden the audience quietens down and stares at me. They thought I was a spy. An American. So I changed what I was going to say and instead of something jingoistic I said, ‘the calibre of racing on Port Philip Bay showed the Americans that an entire nation is coming to get them’. And all the applause broke out. I was accepted. It felt good. One of the highlights from my life.

I moved to the North Coast of NSW. And I loved it here. Became a farmer. Raising beautiful Murray Grey Cattle, sheep and 6000 tropical stone fruit trees. Then I went blind for 3 years (very fast growing cataract - still undergoing treatment for it). I had to sell the farm. For example one day I went down a row of trees spraying, and the tractor hit a bump and stopped. I got out and walked around it and bumped into a telephone pole. I hadn’t seen the pole from the seat of the tractor.

So I started to teach at Southern Cross University. I became a lecturer for them for seven years. Business studies. Marketing. Management. Promotions. All the fun things. Then I developed Parkinson’s and I had to give up teaching. So now I’m just cruising with the motion. I’m still getting involved and enjoying life.

At home I’d take them (his parents) up a cup of tea every morning at 6 o’clock. Every day for 52 years. I didn’t know I had Cerebral Palsy until ten years ago.

I didn’t know. In 1920/1930, nobody knew. In 1927 I was born. If something happened when I was born, I don’t know. Some people said I didn’t cry for three days.

I might be the oldest person in Australia with this disease.

(Ian’s father was a doctor, they could never pinpoint exactly what was wrong with him. He had a very loving family and they never deterred anything that he tried to do. His Dad got him into the share market. He was very independent, but he lived with his parents his whole life and that’s why he’s always been such a devoted son. When he was first born, they thought maybe he’d live till he was 30 and if he lived after 30 he’d be in a wheelchair until 50. It’s probably only in the last ten years that he’s deteriorated. He drove, he did everything at home, he could walk. – Sally, Ian’s niece)

I enjoyed two jobs. One job I had for 8 months. I didn’t last long. Then I joined the Murwillumbah hospital. I was there for 40 odd years. I helped them in the storeroom and messenger boy. I was never paid the full wage. Handicapped. But I did all right. My holidays were in July. They said on Friday, ‘you need to take them on Monday’. On Monday night they rang up me and asked me to come back to work. Which I did. A fool. I should have said no. We had a farm at Mooball, I like going out there. I would try and work the farm with my brother but my back’s too bad. I went on tours. I’ve been to Japan. I’ve been to Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Noumea, New Zealand eight times – five of them on a cruise. My favourite place is here, always here. (Ian grew up in Kingscliff on Hungerford Lane overlooking the creek). I went around the world in 7 weeks. Via Japan, Honolulu, Seattle to England. 23 days on the continent. Beijing. Rounded the Cape of Good Hope around South Africa because the Suez was closed. I rode a camel in Ayers Rock. They were all encouraging me, so I did it. I’ve got two scooters. I go out to town. I might go away for about an hour and a half. It (scooter) goes about 15mile an hour. I’ve been down to Salt (Village). I’ve been to Fingal (Head). Going along the boardwalk near the creek. I try and go out as much as I can on my scooter. Only problem is, it’s not far enough out (town). I like to keep busy. I’ve had an adventurous life. I got all my travel in. I have an amazing family.