300 years in Lorne

WEEKS away from his 100th birthday, long-time Lorne resident Doug Sterling mentions how he recently slowed down – in kilometre per hour terms, at least – months ago giving his car to his niece after hers was written off in an accident.

He’s since replaced his fuel combustion engine with an electric one in what he calls his “gopher”, a golf-style buggy, but still happily walks up and down the town’s notoriously hilly streets with remarkable ease.

At 99 years of age, Doug is comparatively young compared to two other long-time friends and locals, Audrey MacLeod and Geoff Jarratt, who in February and May this year each chalked up 100 years of age.

“I forgot to notify the Queen,” Ms MacLeod remarked.

Her daughter Janet noted that she did receive correspondence from Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party marking the occasion.

“I’ll never live that down,” Audrey responded.

“I tell you with communications these days, everybody knows everything about you.”

Audrey would know, having served as a telephonist in World War II based in Nhill at the RAAF training base there, close to where she grew up and met her husband, Jock.

“Now you can just google it,” she said.

Audrey celebrated her 100th birthday in February this year at her daughter’s Warnambool house.

“We had the biggest party because my nephew who has just about the biggest parties in Australia, he was 80, and I was 100, there was 106 guests,” she said.

Audrey was one of the socialites around town, Doug recalled, who first met she and her husband when they moved to town in 1984.

“She and Jock liked dancing,” Doug said..

“Do you remember that?” Audrey asked.

“At the Deans Marsh Hall when Jock had his 70th birthday,” Doug said.

“I couldn’t dance… but they could.”

Audrey still lives alone in the Erskine Falls Road home her husband built in three months in 1984. Janet only recently moved in permanently next door to the house also built around the time by
her father.

While sharing more than 40 years of friendship, Audrey is a relative newcomer to town compared with Doug and his lifelong friend Geoff, who’ve lived most of their lives there.

“We’ve known each other since we were rolling around as babies,” Doug later recalled when visiting Geoff at his aged care home in Lorne.

“Do you have beer any more?” Doug asked Geoff.

“I have a bottle of cider every night… I lost the taste for beer.”