STORY - "Love and Happiness: Key to a Good Innings"

Living a fulfilling 100 years is a unique achievement not many of us could imagine. Having recently celebrated her 100th birthday, Mary Bull knows about getting the most out of life and prevailing against adversity. She has made a lasting impact on this world, boasting three children, 11 grandchildren, 24 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.

Although she insists hers is not an interesting story, Mary can enthral you with modest and engaging tales of her life through two World Wars, the industrial and information technology revolutions and the passing of the 20th century. All it takes is a cup of milky tea and a fresh Boston Tea Cake to entice her to share her wisdom.

“It’s a long way to go back. I’m 100 you know,” Mary says, repeatedly. It is a gentle reminder of the catalogue of memories crowding her weary yet still lucid mind, to which she refers, “It’s rusting. I get misled sometimes. I get off the track.” She often apologises, “There’s nothing too interesting.” But dressed smartly in her Melbourne Cup outfit of red and black blouse and jacket, complete with make-up and trademark bright red nail polish, Mary returns to chapters of her life written long ago.

Mary was born in 1907 at Oxley, a small township in south western NSW, the birthplace of her parents, Jessie and Thomas Waring. She was the fourth of eight children, all of whom she has survived. From age five, she spent much of her childhood in Hay, where her father was a farmer, shearer and tended horses at the Cobb & Co interchange. “It was a one horse town,” Mary reminisces. It was a time of happiness and security which she longed for when living as a single mother with three children in Sydney during World War II (WWII).

Hay was a happy time of dance competitions entered with her father and countless Saturday night dances, where her father was unsurpassed in ‘swinging’ the concertina. “I love to dance. My toes tingle when I dance,” Mary savours the memory, nominating the waltz as her favourite dance. Remarking on today’s dancing, Mary exclaims, “Oh, I couldn’t turn myself inside out like that.” Before the gramophone, regular family entertainment included singing at home. “I loved singing. It would be no good saying you wouldn’t be singing. You sang with Father playing the piano or concertina.” Her favourite song remains “Always” and she still loves to sing.

Mary’s childhood entertainment contrasts greatly with the iPods, Playstations, and DVDs of today’s children. “You went swimming in the river. There was tennis, cricket, or picnic days and ‘go-fishing’ days,” she says. “I was very clever. I went down one afternoon and caught a fish. I put it on the ground and the nasty old thing bristled up and punctured my ankle,” she laughs, recounting a fishing misadventure on the Murrumbidgee River.

Life wasn’t all dancing and fishing though. With some indifference, Mary attended the local Catholic school run by Presentation Sisters. “I didn’t like school much. Well, I just had to go so I made the best of it,” Mary says. She vividly recalls when a boy inked her plaits in a desk’s ink well. “It went all down my frock at the back. The dress was of a pink colour and there was a horrid black stain. Poor old Mum was disgusted,” she laughs.

Mary left school at 13 to be a nanny for a number of families over many years, including the local bank manager’s family. She recalls her wedding a little later in 1929 at Cootamundra. “There wasn’t such a big thing made about them [weddings]. Now there’s a party at the drop of a hat.” After bearing three children her marriage dissolved and she found her way to Sydney in 1941, where she worked at a munitions factory during WWII. “The women worked three shifts. Outside the factory at night there used to be a policeman who knew all the girls. He would come over with his big cape and walk you home,” she says, adding, “We used to have some very good times during the war.” Mary’s resilience and Catholic faith helped her to make the most of that difficult period of separation, war and food rationing.

Sit with Mary for a while and you are treated to many stories of country life in the 1920s, child rearing in the 1930s, tales of Japanese and Italian soldiers interned at the Hay prisoner-of-war centre during WWII and Sydney life in the 1950s and 60s. Amongst these, is the anecdote of her first ride in a car in Hay. “We all tumbled into the ‘tin Lizzie’,” as she refers to the black Ford. “We hadn’t gone for more than ten minutes and it wrapped itself around a tree trunk, landing my mother in hospital for six weeks and I was knocked out.”

“I have had a good innings. I’m grateful,” she says with satisfaction. When asked for her secret, she claims, “I did nothing special. I just got here.” Relenting, she recommends being surrounded by health, happiness and a loving family. “A healthy family is worth a goldmine,” she believes. “Just to see my family is happiness.”

Scott Moore

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