Warrnambool couple have received two letters from the Queen

"I'm very sad this morning actually," Mrs Sproston said. The Queendied peacefully on Friday Australian time after 70 years on the throne.

Mrs Sproston still cherishes the two letters she received from Her Majesty - one when she was about 10 and the other just a few years ago.

She said she remembered the week King George died and Elizabeth became Queen because it was the same week she had lost her own grandmother.

"I remember it very well. I was only about 10," she said.

The Queen toured England after the coronation and Mrs Sproston was among the crowd of school children who lined the streets to wave at her.

"There were great big stands put up all along the road so that we could see the Queen come," she said.

"She came to our little town in Wednesfield."

It was rare to get a glimpse of the Queen back then because not everyone had TV or 24-hour news.

"I watched the coronation on a tiny little 12-inch TV screen - black and white," she said.

"My aunty had a television. We were lucky. We went there to watch it.

"She was wonderful. They all were."

The first letter Mrs Sproston got from the Queen was when she and a friend wrote to her after the coronation.

"We got a letter from her thanking us for that," she said.

When she and husband Ron wrote the book about the shipwreck - The Lost of the Loch Ard - the couple, who had moved to Australia decades ago, sent the Queen a copy because there was a connection to one of her relatives.

"She wrote to us then," she said.

Mr Sproston said whether you were a monarchist or a republican, you had to admire her commitment.

"When she started so many years ago, whether her reign be short or long, she would be committed to the service of the Commonwealth," he said.

"When you think two days before she died she was still working. She met the new prime minister of the UK. You've got to admire that. Her consistency. Her diplomacy.

"To be able to gain the respect of people from so many different cultures. I think that's the thing that I've always admired about her."

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