Do you think that the world is a better place now or back when you were a young child? "No, I think we saw the best of our country." "Mum always used to say, they saw the best of the country" but I think we might have saw the best of the country. My name is Edith Margaret Stephens. I was born in Colac. Very simple life. Yes. Very simple. Horse and cart days. No motor cars. Very few. Pretty plain living. Pretty plain living. This is myself and my sister. She's three and a half years older than me and she's 108. And I'm 105. What was it like growing up together? Did you get along well? No, we were quite separate actually. She had different friends to me. A lot older friends. I was sort of left on my own a lot. I didn't have many friends. Only a few and they all went away. Mum and Dad they were farmers. "They used to milk the cows for other people." "They used to milk the cows for other people." You see, they were on different farms "and they never had anything for themselves until we went to Eurack" and then they had their own little farm. Yeah, we had a pony. ‘Dick’ his name was. Mum used to drive him in the buggy to go to Colac. "You know, you had to go to Colac to shop." She used to leave early in the morning and came home late at night in [the] dark. Came home at dark. Almost at night. We were always [at] dances "because Mum and Dad took us to most of the dancing." And a friend of ours, Mrs Holt, she was very good at dressmaking. She made me a lovely man's outfit. A boy's outfit. Made a tall hat. You know, one of those tall hats? Oh, I thought it was Christmas. "Our friend across the road, she dressed up as a bride." So we went as a pair, you see. Her and I used to do a lot of dancing "and we won all the competitions around everywhere." In these outfits. They were really nice, nice outfits. He was my grandfather. Andrew Swayn his name was. I was staying with him, you see, in Colac and I was about 15 I suppose or something. I wasn't going to school. I’d left school so must have been about 14 or 15. "And he always sat at the stove in the kitchen." "He never, ever went into the dining room to sit" because they had boarders too, you see. But he always sat out in the kitchen. He had a big spittoon down beside him, so I just sketched him, him sitting there, you see, on the back of this envelope. "Then I went home and I redone it on a pastel." In pastel. Ah that way... "It's been spoilt because it’s been rubbed." So how did you meet granddad? "We went to school at the same school at Stony." And then as young people we sort of went around dances and things. Met that way. We just sort of, you know, fell in... There was no-one else around. Put it that way. This is my wedding photo. "It was during the war, so we weren’t brides." We weren't dressed as brides so I’ve just got a frock. "And a grey choker that I got from me 21st." And me special hat that I bought. I loved that hat. Made me look a bit taller. "We had a honeymoon up in Gippsland actually." "Frank had an auntie and an uncle up there." "So we spent a week or something up there, I think." Yeah, when we were married first, well, we went up to the farm to live. Dad’s farm, and we milked the cows there. So Mum and Dad come back to the farm, and we went to Pomborneit to live. Three mile up the road. "So tell us about what you did at the post office?" Yes, the post office... "We came back to Stonyford then and I had to learn" "all the stuff and what to do and everything." "Answer the phone, put the calls through for all the people." "Another lady here used to have a post office too." "She was telling me, “Oh” she said, “we had to plug them in”," she said, “and ring them up”. And I said, “I did a lot of that meself.” "Yes, well, me uncle was, he was the mailman" when I went into the post, when we went into [the] post office first. "And then of course when he lost the mail [run]" and Frank put in for the mail run so then he was doing "what Uncle Dick used to do then." Go and get the mail and that. Sometimes we had to go and get it. Frank wouldn’t be there. And what did you do with the mail? We used to have a great tussle getting that mail down to the railway line sometimes, you know. The train would be coming down the hill, and we were running down the road... "in front of the engine to take the mail bag down..." We were that late sometimes. "Frank even had to run down the back of the train" lots of times and put the mail bags over the top, on the end of the platform. We had some struggles. Ups and downs. Then there's the children coming, in between all that. Had eight children. Carmel, Wendy Douglas, Noel Les and Trevor and Russell and Gwenda. Had their ups and downs and their squabbles and their... But on the whole they weren’t too bad. They were pretty good. And I had 21 grandchildren 42 great grandchildren and three great, great grandchildren What do you think is the most interesting invention that's happened in your time? Invention? I suppose the phones were... Automatic phones coming. "I suppose it’d be electricity when it came in." "And we never had showers or anything in those days." It was all baths. You had to heat the water in the copper. No hot water like you think of now. Yeah, and the TVs and all that. "We were at Stonyford before we ever had a TV." Got a TV there. First TV. Black and white one. Got a bit of insurance money. Mum and Dad had insured us as babies, you know. They used to do it years ago. And it came due so I thought, "I didn’t know what to do with it," so I thought, well we never had a tele and they were just new out, and so I thought I’d buy one and everybody would benefit from it. Which they did too. It was a great thing. Saturday night, we’d all get in the lounge room "when the football was on, the kids used to follow them." "They all had a different team they followed." "And they’d get in there to watch the football." And it was toast night and we had the open fire going and they all toasted their toast at the fire. Had a big pile of toast. And they’d sit down and watch the footy and eat their toast. Saturday night. Your craft? Oh, the craft. What things have you done? Lots of things. We used to put entries in the Colac show. Make a window show. And one year we did Camptown Races. You painted? "Oh yes, I did a bit of painting but just self-taught, more or less." Copy work. I loved painting trees and things. I’d have a go at most things.