There’s a distinctly British flavour to the Carinity 100 Club for centenarians at Carinity Brookfield Green.
Its newest member, Winifred Tazey (pictured), celebrated her 100th birthday with friends at the residential aged care community in western Brisbane on Monday.
Like the two previous Carinity 100 Club inductees from Brookfield Green – Edith Howard and Margaret Holloway – Winifred was born in England.
However, during her 10 decades of life, Winifred – known as ‘Wyn’ – has spent her time equally living in Australia, New Zealand and her homeland.
She was born Winifred Hawley in Spennymore, County Durham, England on 11 January, 1921.
For five years during World War II, she worked for the Royal Air Force as an aircraft hand before marrying Edward Tazey in May 1945.
Searching for a better lifestyle, in 1958 the Tazeys and their two children migrated to New Zealand where they built a house on a quarter-acre block with plenty of room for gardening.
“We went to Napier because it had a nice temperate climate,” Wyn’s daughter Margaret Seegel recalls.
As well as gardening, particularly growing flowers, Wyn’s other favourite hobbies included baking and knitting.
“She used to do a lot of knitting and after the war she would knit baby jackets and hats and booties,” Margaret says.
In 1988, Wyn and her husband migrated to Australia, building a house on the Sunshine Coast where Winifred lived until she moved to Carinity Brookfield Green in 2013.
Longevity is seemingly in Wyn’s genes: her mother lived until her early-90s and two of Wyn’s surviving siblings are also aged in their 90s.
Though some lifestyle habits may have contributed to Australia’s newest centenarian living a long life.
“She has never driven a car so she has always done a lot of walking which has kept her fit, and she has never smoked cigarettes and never really drank alcohol,” Margaret says.
Margaret describes her mother as a private person and a “very good, caring mother who always looked after us well”.
