LENGTH OF YEARS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 118, 20 May 1937, Page 23

LENGTH OF YEARS

OLDEST AUSTRALIAN

STILL A JOY IN LIFE

(From "The Post's" Representative!)

SYDNEY, May 7,

On the eve of celebrating her 107 th birthday* Australia's oldest inhabitant, Mrs. Sarah Musgrave, of Auburn, a Sydney suburb, i had one complaint. Her children and relatives kept too strict a watch on her and prevented her, to use her own words, from "sneaking out."

"There's a lot of fun in this world for me yet, and I have no intention ot missing it," she said. "I'm as happy as anybody else, I haven't an enemy, and people still like coming to see me."

She srciled mischievously when the interviewer asked if she thought she would see out her 108 th year. "You listen to me, young man," she said. "I'm here until11 pass 110: then I'll be quite prepared to go to Heaven."

Mrs. Musgrave believes explicitly in religion, but she does not make a fetish of it. She reads and writes letters, and uses only one pair of normal spectacles. Occasionally, she admitted, she chafed under the necessity of being forced to remain in bed, but, she added: "You can tell the world that being 107 isn't as bad as some might think—and if ever you're out this way on your rounds, call in and you'll get the best cup of tea you ever tasted."

Mrs. Musgrave is a severe critic of tht modern young woman. She herself has never used powder in her life. She has never had an argument, and she has never danced. If she could live her life over again she says she would go on the land, where she would never see young women with painted finger-nails or short skirts. '■ "One of the reasons I have kept my health is that I never danced," she .said. "Dancing twists girls' insides. There would be less sickness among them if they were hot gallivanting about at dance, halls until midnight and after." Aeroplanes are another of Mrs. Musgrave's bugbears. "If God had wanted men to fly. He would have given them wings," she said. "It's tempting Providence." * . I