Vale, Olive: World’s Oldest Blogger Moves On

Thanks to Twitter and an alert Aussie expat PR guy in New York, Paull Young, I’ve just picked up on the marvellous story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, of Olive Riley of Woy Woy, New South Wales, Australia, until yesterday the World’s Oldest Blogger.

Olive has now moved on after her 108 years on this planet.

In recent years she has been blogging about those years and her various experiences, including

…raising three children on her own, living through two world wars and the Depression, her work as a station cook in rural Queensland and as an egg sorter and barmaid in Sydney.

She started blogging only last February, in other words, well into the first decade of her second century.

Just shows, you’re never too old to start blogging!

Olive’s last post shows something of her spirit and includes some humorous but poignant verses by one of her readers, which reminded me of what a physical challenge it was for my mother and grandmothers and all the mothers of those days before washing machines and dryers, with what we now regard as a simple, mostly-automated task, the weekly washing. It reminded me of how ecstatic my mother was the first washing machine was installed at our place - and why.

Vale, Olive.