Rutherglen local Aylean Baker wants everyone to reach 100 years of age so they can experience what she has over the past week.
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It’s a milestone that she celebrated last Thursday, 100 years after being born on January 10, 1919.
“I wish everyone could live to 100 so they can see and experience the same thing that I have, it’s just amazing,” Ms Baker told The Free Press.
And while the 100-year-old dearly appreciates the birthday wishes, gifts and congratulations, she couldn’t help but think: “My house now looks like a flower shop!”
Ms Baker has lived in her current Rutherglen home since 1972 but has roamed the town for her whole life.
“I love the town,” she said.
“The people are so friendly and you get to know everybody. But the last few years it’s changed because the town is growing.
“I remember Rutherglen as a gold mine town with 24 hotels, to now it’s a tourist town.”
Ms Baker married her husband Ed, now deceased, in 1941 and lived on a farm in Glenhurst (Lilliput), where she used to love riding on horses – something she still truly misses.
But there was another childhood dream.
“I would’ve dearly loved to be a primary school teacher, that was one of my loves, but my mother couldn’t afford to send me to college,” Ms Baker recalled.
She instead worked at a mixed chain store where there were nine other girls – happy there until moving to the farm with her husband during the war.
The grandmother of 10 and great grandmother of 16 is the only foundation member left of the Mother’s Union and has always been devoted to St Stephen’s church in Rutherglen, while she’s also the last surviving foundation member of the Rutherglen Bowling Club, starting it in 1952 and playing well into her 90s.
“My biggest thrill in my years of bowling would be when me and my bowling partner Margaret Harbinson, we won the Victorian Ladies Carnival and there were 1,000 women and we won from little Rutherglen, that was one of my proudest achievements from playing,” she said.
“I’ve enjoyed bowling, it’s been part and parcel in my life.”
The bowling club now has an ‘Aylean Baker Invitation Fours’ event in the legend’s honour.
Ms Baker certainly likes to keep busy, keeping her brain occupied through reading and solving sudoku puzzles in her downtime.
She has also exercised every day for the past two years following two hip operations and believes she is fortunate for her health.
“Without my daily exercise I would be in a wheelchair,” Ms Baker said.
“I’m very fortunate because I do enjoy reading and doing sudoku, it helps to keep the brain active.”
While keeping active in some form is a widely-known way to prolong life, Ms Baker puts the key down to eating healthy.
“I do worry about processed foods. But I think fresh food and good living and we grew a lot of our own,” she said.
“I’ve been lucky to be able to keep playing bowls.”
Upon reflecting on her 100 years, Ms Baker has appreciated all moments in her life, and there could still be more to come given her mother lived until 102.
She’s also not very fond of today’s added reliance on and use of technology.
“I am rather worried about the technology and I asked a gentleman the other day ‘how much further can they go?’ and he said ‘well I’m afraid to tell you we have only just started’, and that worries me, because there’s no privacy left,” Ms Baker said.
“And of course the drugs is a terrible worry, I look at my offspring and wonder and hope that they never ever get on them.”
Ms Baker’s list of achievements go on, but a cherished moment in her life was also being elected life member of the Rutherglen Agricultural Society in 1989.
The 100-year-old was the fourth child of eight and has three sons, Geoff, Ken and Barry, and a daughter, Joy, who she says have been “amazing”.
“They’re a wonderful, caring family, they are just absolutely incredible. I’ve had so many wonderful friends,” she said.
“I really do count my blessings having such a wonderful family that cares. I was in respite at Karinya and I felt that I could manage at home, so I asked the family ‘could I have a try?’ And they said as long as you get meals on wheels and I said ‘that’ll be wonderful’.
“I can’t thank them enough, I’ve been blessed to have them in my life.”
Ms Baker is now looking forward to watching our Australians succeed in this month’s Australian Open.