Happy 100th birthday Victor!
ANOTHER Dubbo-ite joins the exclusive Centenarian’s Club today.
Resident of Orana Gardens in Dubbo, Victor Albert Wood, turns 100 on Thursday, October 11, and staff and friends are throwing him a surprise party to celebrate.
It was exactly one month before the end of World War 1 that Victor became the first child of parents Lucie Isabelle Martin and Clarence Albert Wood, born at Nurse Toomey’s private hospital in Dubbo.
Clarence was a barber and barman in Gilgandra and Eumungerie.
Victor attended school in Eumungerie where, in 1932, he topped 6th grade in the second term examination held at Eumungerie Public School.
He also went to school in Gilgandra.
There certainly were highs and lows for him in 1934 when a newspaper wrote in May that he’d gone on a holiday touring and fishing with his father, yet later in the year, “Master Victor Wood badly jarred his hand and has been unable to attend school.”
Two highlights of Victor’s life include working as a machine fitter in World War II for the Australian Air Force and, in his younger years, being a very good bike racer.
“I was a sprinter,” he told Dubbo
“I rode a Speedwell bike and sometimes used to win.”
A 1939 newspaper article also says that while riding the 40 kilometres from Gilgandra to Eumungerie when Victor was 21 “he skidded in some sand and ran into a culvert. He was thrown heavily, and suffered from shock and severe abrasions to the face and head.”
Half a year later WWII began and Victor joined the Australian Air Force. His younger brother John joined the army.
He worked as a machine fitter in Darwin working on Beaufighters, Mosquitos, Havocs, Blenham Bombers and more.
He married Hilda Henrietta Stanley.
Victor keeps old black and white photographs of his youth at Orana Gardens as souvenirs of a life well lived.
Happy 100th Birthday Victor!