17-10-2007, 14:30
|
#1 (permalink)
|
Status: BeautUtes.com est. 2004 Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Dumbleyung! Posts: 8,170
|  Worlds Oldest Blogger 108 Year Old Australian Olive Riley
 Worlds Oldest Blogger 108 Year Old Australian Olive Riley Quote:
Olive Riley has seen a lot in her 107 years and now she's recounting some of her life experiences in blog, (or 'blob' as she calls it) and it's thought that Olive might be the world's oldest blogger! Among the stories she's shared are memories of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (she was there), and stories of her time on a station near Muttaburra in the 1930s.
Mike Rubbo first met Olive when he was researching centenarians and he then made a film for the ABC called 'All about Olive'. He says he gets very excited about her stories.
He is now Olive's blogging assistant and he spoke with Pat Hession, ABC Western Queensland's Morning Program presenter, and said he records Olive's stories and posts them onto her blog.
One of the stories on Olive's blog is about her experiences working on a sheep station in western Queensland. Mr Rubbo explains that Olive was on 'Culloden' station near Muttaburra around about 1937 and she was there with two of her children.
It was the Spence family that owned the station in the 1930s and Olive worked for them as a station cook. She describes the station as, 'a hot, dry place' he says. "She cooked for both the family and also for the men who worked on the station and at that point it was a sheep station."
Mr Rubbo has tracked down Tom Spence who was the son of the owners at that time and about the same age as Olive's children. "He's still alive and in his eighties and he remembered Olive as a very attractive women, a very hard-worker."
One story that Olive remembers about 'Culloden' is the day she went skinny dipping in the dam with her daughter and also the Spence's daughter. When they got back to the house, explains Mr Rubbo. "Mr Spence said, 'You shouldn't do that', and they said 'How do you know what we were doing'? and he said, 'Well, I saw this man spying with spy-glasses so we spied on him and it turned out that he was watching you through the binoculars, and so I've sacked him'. So Olive was telling this story to show that Mr Spence was very strict and he wouldn't stand for any nonsense," he says.
Olive hasn't ever returned to Muttaburra... she was last there in 1937 and Mr Rubbo says he's searching for photos of 'Culloden' in the early days for Olive's blog. "We have one photo of the old house - but maybe someone knows someone who visited the house and took some photos there because that would be wonderful."
"We're also trying to track down early photos of Muttaburra because when Olive was going through Muttaburra on the way to the station, she stopped over and went to the open-air picture show - with the deck chairs and she's got a vivid description of that. We've found one photo of the picture show but I'd love to find more because I think that's so romantic - the idea of movies under the stars," says Mr Rubbo.
The next story that Olive is really looking forward to recounting is about her friends Annie and Danny from Broken Hill. She says she enjoys working with Mike on the blog... "In and out, yeah, I get a bit tired sometimes."
| |
|  |
Similar Threads 
