SO, when you turn 100, does the Queen really send a congratulatory telegram?

Advertise with News of The Area today.
It’s worth it for your business.
Message us.
Phone us – (02) 4981 8882.
Email us – media@newsofthearea.com.au

That’s the question to which Mrs Pauline Cole now knows the answer.

Pauline, a resident of Winda Woppa, turned 100 last Monday and celebrated the day in the age of coronavirus with a fun “relay party” of socially distanced family and friends visiting in safe groups of five to six guests.

Three-year-old Great Grand Daughter Millie, locked down in Melbourne, decided that if four year-olds were “big kids”, Grandma Pauline must be “really really big” and sent her love by Skype.

A century is a long time at any time but the twentieth century in which Pauline has lived seems to have had it all: the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, World War II (and marriage in a wedding dress created from a US cargo parachute posted home from Borneo), the Korean War, the Vietnam war, reunification of Germany, collapse of USSR, the advent of global flight, space travel, the technological revolution – the list goes on and on.

As Pauline sat amid beautiful flowers, family, friends and birthday cards on Monday she smiled at the thought that her life so far has spanned from one pandemic to the current one.

A life filled with memories and experiences.

Oh, and that telegram?

Thanks to local State MP, Kate Washington, the telegram has been replaced with congratulatory cards from the Queen, the Governor General, the Governor, the PM and the Premier.

So now you know.

Happy Birthday Mum.

By Peter COLE