When Doreen Thurling was born in Albury in 1924, the second of 13 children, life expectancy for women was just 63.3 years.
She outdid that statistic by nearly 37 years when she turned 100 on June 1.
The crowd who attended Doreen’s birthday celebration was told that she had lived the joys and sorrows of her years with “grace, determination and love”.
She came to Sunshine after marrying Ron, whom she met in Albury in 1943.
A butcher from Sunshine, Ron didn’t serving overseas in World War 2 because the army needed butchers to help feed the thousands of servicemen and women stationed in and near Albury.
Doreen left school at 13 to help her mother look after her younger siblings.
At that stage she was one of nine children aged under 16 in the household.
An ardent North Melbourne supporter who used to camp outside Arden Street overnight to buy finals’ tickets, she is still active socially attending St Albans Community Centre every Monday for lunch, social and craft activities, and a ‘Golden Girls’ outing every second Friday.
Doreen says the weekly Monday event, organised by Brimbank council, “has kept me alive“. A bus picks her up at 9am and drops her off at 3pm.
Doreen says she didn’t smoke and rarely drank, other than the occasional lemon, lime and bitters, and she sewed and knitted many rugs and trauma toys for the Sunshine Hospital and other community projects.
She worked until she was 67 in sandwich shops in the city, sewing cushions for Cintique furniture in Sunshine and for Armaguard making up pay envelopes.
Her lounge room is filled with family photos from varying decades. Her eldest grandchild recently turned 50.
