THIS CLUB’S A RARE BREED
FNQ’s grand ladies hit 105 years of age
EILEEN Tayler joins an exclusive club today and it’s one most of us will never be part of.
She is the fifth woman in Cairns to reach 105 in the past year and hovers halfway between the status of centenarian and super-centenarian, reached at 110.
The Woree mother of three, grandmother of seven, great grandmother of five and great great grandmother of two says every year is a blessing and one she never expected to have. “Not in my wildest dreams.” Born on August 21, 1914 just after the declaration of WWI, home was Georgetown, where her father worked in a store.
Four years later, they packed up their horse-drawn wagons and made the arduous trip to the Atherton Tableland, where her father turned timber cutter at Danbulla, now a mere memory under Tinaroo Dam.
“I didn’t start school until I was 11 and only went for four years,” Eileen says.
She was up at 3am to milk the cows before school, walked 3km there and 3km back and was always home in time for the evening milking.
“I loved school. That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to be a teacher,” Eileen says.
But by 15 she was working full-time on the family farm – milking the cows, doing the housework and cooking.
The family of 10 saw the Depression out on their dairy farm with a good supply of fresh produce and became neighbours to the 9th Division of the Australian Army when WWII broke out.
Eileen worked at the Barron Valley Hotel in Atherton and took charge of the laundry at Atherton Hospital before meeting and marrying timber cutter Andrew Tayler.
Eileen says good food may have been the key to her long life, but granddaughter Lilly Tayler has another theory.
“She used to say about my daughter, I just want to live long enough to see her in a school uniform. She’s 26 now and had kids of her own. Nanny’s goal was to stay around to see these kids. In return, she is the matriarch everyone still looks to.”
Eileen will celebrate her birthday today with friends and enjoy another celebration with family, including her 92year-old sister, on Sunday.