THE secret to a long, healthy life? Walking.
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Warrnambool great-grandmother Annie Brown says staying active – and strong genes – helped her reach her 100th birthday.
The youngest of Walter and Jane Hawkins’ six children arrived in the world on July 24, 1917, in Cobden.
Her childhood was spent on a dairy farm in Nirranda East.
She remembers walking through paddocks and deterring snakes on her way to school, which she attended until eighth grade.
“We had to walk a long way to school in them days,” Mrs Brown said.
“We had about three-mile or more (to walk) and no roads, only a bit at the end.
“I walked everywhere, everywhere, even when I was at the woollen mill.”
Mrs Brown, a mother of one, grandmother of four and great-grandmother of 12, first moved to Warrnambool at 21.
“I went straight to work at the woollen mill for five years,” she said.
“I left and got married (to Jim Brown) in ‘46 and went out on a farm and helped to milk the cows for nine years.
“When the nine years were up, we came back into Warrnambool, my husband and I, and I went to work at Fletcher Jones until I was 60.
“I sewed up all the trousers.”
Mrs Brown said the world had changed dramatically over her 10 decades.
She has lived through two world wars and the Great Depression and witnessed the invention of television and the internet.
“I remember the big war,” she said.
“I was working at the woollen mill and I remember one lady in particular, she was crying.
“I said ‘what’s wrong?’ and she said ‘my brother won’t come back’.”
Mrs Brown celebrated her 100th birthday with a special party with 70 family and friends at City Memorial Bowls Club on Saturday.
She credited a healthy lifestyle – she’s a non-drinker and non-smoker and played basketball and bowls in her younger days – for her longevity.
But she said good genes had also played their part.
“I had two other sisters, one was 92 and one was 91, and my brother was three weeks off 90,” Mrs Brown said.
“It runs in the family. My father died at 80.”
I went to work at Fletcher Jones until I was 60. I sewed up all the trousers.
- Annie Brown