“My dad wouldn't let us have a party at home because it was thought of almost as a sacred day, so after midday or so, or in the evening, I was allowed to have friends over then,” she said.

A century later, Mrs Jolme would have been more comfortable with a quiet morning of reflection followed by a low-key acknowledgement of a life well lived – but her family were having none of it.

“I don't like being in the limelight, I was going to have a very quiet 100^th birthday and my daughter and all my granddaughters decided I wasn’t,” she said.

Instead, this Anzac Day Mrs Jolme will host a steady stream of well-wishers in her adopted home town of Castlemaine, where she moved from Brisbane, via Harcourt, with her late-husband Philip in 1952.

Among her achievements in that time, Mrs Jolme includes her family – which now includes two children, five grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild – and her charity work with the Australian Red Cross, for which she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2010.

“It was a good town to come to, Castlemaine, the people were very kind and so many charities going,” she said.

“My main interest was the Red Cross, I was 24 years the chairperson, then I retired, I felt it was time but I kept on with the [Patient Transport Services] and that was very valuable to here because most of the people were older, their children had gone to Melbourne, possibly to get university careers, and I felt it was a part of me because I did miss my home life, I missed my very, very happy home life while I was in Brisbane, so then I settled in.”

It was that happy home life, that continued as she raised children of her own, with which the former journalist and “social editoress” credited her longevity.

“It’s been a very happy life really,” she said.

But it’s not her only secret to a long life.

“And I love chocolate,” she laughed.

Despite the enormous changes she’d seen during the past century, Mrs Jolme said it still didn’t feel like 100 years.

“My brother used to get these magazines and they had [someone] going up to the moon and we all laughed our heads off, thought it was impossible, next thing it is possible,” she said.

“I can’t imagine that it’s 100 [years] already, it doesn't seem like it, occasionally I think of it but most times it doesn't, I just think I’m about 60 or something – I look at myself [in the mirror] and think ‘I'm not as old as that’.”