GREAT BIRTHDAY CAKE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21982, 13 December 1934, Page 21

GREAT BIRTHDAY CAKE

— ~v HUNDRED AND TWO CANDLES THE § MOTHER OF GEELONG" [from our own t correspondent] MELBOURNE. Dec. 4 One hundred and two lighted candles «n a great birthday cake made a rare sight at.the 102 nd birthday of Mrs. Elizabeth Andrews, Geelong's oldest inhabitant, on Tuesday last. More than 60 of her descendants were there. Out of her 83 years of residence in Gfeelong Mrs. Andrews can draw the memory of many incidents in the pioneer daya of .Victoria. Born in Cornwall two years before John Batman landed at Indented Heads, Mir®. Andrews, with her parents and other members of her family, arrived in Victoria m the sailing ship Lebuan in 184$, 'a girl of 16 years. In the following year she married Mr. C. Andrews, who had arrived in Geelong from Norfolk in 1848.

Mrs. Andrews remembers the gold rush to Ballarat in the fifties, and the return of people to Geelong with their fortunes made. Real estate boomed, then crashed, and the savings of the diggings were lost. On one of their trips Mrs. Andrews' husband and her brothers brought back 1001b.- of gold, mined by them in the Koh-i-Noor diggings at Ballarat. Mrs. Andrews' likes company, and thoroughly enjoyed the party. When nearly 20 of her friends dropped in at her home on Sunday to pay . their re* Bpects it was suggested to Mrs.' Andrews that they should leave early to save her any strain." "Fiddlesticks, 1 she exclaimed. "Let them all come, and stay as long as they like." although she has just recovered frorh an illness, Mrs. Andrews refused to allow the birthday party to be called off, ; Mrs. Andrews has 71" children, grandchildren. great-grandchildren and greatr great-grandchilrlren' Hying in Victoria.