A travel-enhanced century for Val
The years have been good to Val Robbie. So has the mileage.
She turns 100 on March 1, having lived in Invercargill and Te Anau, and is nowadays helping liven up Calvary Hospital rest home in Invercargill.
Long before it had become commonplace for young people to strike out on their OE, she was broadening her horizons in her mid to late 20s, making the first of three trips that took her, sometimes in roundabout ways, to Britain.
For the first she hooked up with a close friend, the second with her husband Keith, and the third was to pick herself up after his death. “Having the opportunity to travel has been a great thing,’’ she reflects.
And for this she credits, particularly, her parents. “They had interesting lives, and they saw we had an interest, they encouraged us.’’
The Scottish-born Jock Cuthill and wife Norma raised their family in Invercargill’s Russel St. She went to Waihopai Primary and Southland Girls’ High School, started work for J G Ward and Co, and attended Miss Gillies shorthand typing night school, and at 26 she took off on her first overseas jaunt.
It took three years. This included 20 months in Canada where she developed a love of skiing.
With friend Joan Brown (nee Menzies) she travelled happily and confidently in a quarter-ton panel van, pitching a tent when it was convenient.
Travel has never lost its appeal for her and neither has an active life - at 70 she freedom walked the Milford Track.
Many years later, a widow with sons Hugh and Peter and daughter Chris grown, just as she was coming due to take over as president of the Southland Women’s Club in Esk St, the thought of moving to Te Anau permanently was appealing. When she made the move back to Invercargill and Calvary Hospital’s rest home, it wasn’t to twiddle her thumbs.
Calvary staff will tell you it was her arrival that had them realise it was time to provide email and internet services, so she could maintain the contacts she had already built up with folk overseas.
In 2017, The Southland Times was asking folk the secret of life. Her offering was this: “I think young people should think ahead, keep their brains ticking over, keep fit, and they’ll have a good chance of living to an old age.’’