Bentleys Aged Care resident Isobel McEwan and her daughter shared a moment as the candles on the giant sponge cake before them flickered out.
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They were surrounded by friends and well-wishers on Thursday to mark Mrs McEwan’s 100th birthday.
As the centre’s staff cut up the cake, people passed around a signed letter from the Queen.
How did Mrs McEwan feel to have lived for more than a century?
“Stunned,” she said with a chuckle.
Draped around her shoulders was a reminder of her heritage, a McEwan tartan scarf.
Mrs McEwan was born Isobel Mary Martin in the town of Scottish town of Stepps on April 24, 1916.
When she was 18, she seemed destined to follow in her father’s footsteps and join his accounting firm.
But her interest in numbers would ultimately take her down another career path – Mrs McEwan became a pharmacist.
“She remembers many hours of study by candlelight during black outs, taking textbooks into air raid shelters,” her daughter Sandy Watson said.
The Second World War was underway while Mrs McEwan studied pharmacy at the University of Strathclyde, graduating in 1944.
Her career also led her to the love of her life, Ian McEwan.
He came into the pharmacy at which she was working to fill a prescription, having been medically discharged from the Royal Air Force.
The pair married in Glasgow on August 24, 1945, and decided to move to Australia two years later.
Mrs McEwan’s mother, sister and brother-in-law joined them.
Upon arriving in Sydney in February 1948, Mrs McEwan told the Daily Mirror she had come for the Australian food and the weather.
Their party made the news because they had come by plane, having found it “practically impossible” to get a boat. Airfares cost the family £1300.
Life in Australia was busy. The McEwans had two daughters – Jill and Sandra – and started a business, of which Mrs McEwan was the accountant.
She also worked as a pharmacist until 1980, when she retired, aged 64.
It was not until 2012 that Mrs McEwan made the move from Manly to Bendigo to live with her daughter.
She was 96 at the time and had been living alone for 16 years. Mr McEwan died in 1996, aged 80. Mrs McEwan became a resident at Bentleys in 2013.
“She is an inspiration to her family – loving, generous and thoughtful,” Mrs Watson told those at the birthday party.
“She never gets angry or cross or complains.”