At a glance…
- Australia’s oldest woman, Lorna Henstridge, has sadly passed away aged 112. She was ill with pneumonia when she died.
- We spoke with the centenarian when she was 110 about her philosophy for a long and happy life.
The first thing you notice when you meet the oldest woman in Australia, Lorna Henstridge, is her handshake. Firm, strong like a tradie, not something you expect from a 110-year-old. But not having met a 110-year-old before, I suppose I shouldn’t have any preconceptions.
She was born on D-Day, June 6, 1914, and it’s hard to get your head around the fact that she’s lived through so many historical events, can remember them in great detail and continues to be engaged in her community, family and the news.
Lorna reads the paper daily and says she’d like to live long enough to see things change for the better. She reckons the “world is upside down at the moment” and worries that children now have too much to worry about. If she had her way, we’d all return to the scenes of her childhood, spent in South Australia, where the backyard veggie patch provided most of the food and the cow, milked by her mother, supplied her daily dose of calcium. Chooks clucked underneath the orange tree, and Lorna occupied her time reading, doing schoolwork, playing simple games and helping out with chores.
Her first few years were spent on a farm in Bute on the Yorke Peninsula, where she rode her horse to the station to catch a train to school, which wasn’t the most convenient way to get an education. Her grandmother lived in Unley, an inner-city Adelaide suburb, so the family decided it was easier to relocate Lorna there to continue her schooling at St Peter’s Girls’, then attend business college. This was seen as quite progressive for the time. Educating women was important to Lorna’s mother, Olive, and grandmother, Mary.
Volunteering has always been a big part of Lorna’s life, and it was during a stint in the library at the Soldiers Memorial Hall in Unley that she met her husband, Alan. It was, she says, “love at first sight. He was in the army, on his way to Papua New Guinea, when we met. He was handsome, and I liked that he was clean-shaven.” Later, she adds, “his honesty was a big attraction… It was a very close relationship. We were very much friends.”
They married in January 1945 and moved to the seaside town of Victor Harbor. “It was in the days when you were brought up that the male was in charge of a marriage,” Lorna says. “To begin with, it was like that, but it changed slightly after the children grew up, and we became equal partners.”
Lorna and Alan had three children: Jennie, David, and Carolyn. Today, Lorna also has seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Alan, a talented cricketer, ran the local shoe store and the family lived in the apartment above it. They were just “five steps from the beach”, Lorna says, so they swam every morning.
This was one of Lorna’s favourite times in her long and largely very happy life. In 1956, the Henstridges moved to Keith, close to the Victorian border, to open a menswear store, and there Lorna remained for 64 years. Sadly, Alan died in 2003.
Lorna planted a beautiful garden in Keith. She was “always in the garden”, says her daughter Jennie. She had a prodigious talent for rose-growing and a fondness for a lemon and an orange tree that she’d grown from saplings.
In this farming town, Lorna joined the Country Women’s Association and was active in the local Church of England. Her volunteering expanded to the bowls, tennis, hockey and golf club where she was club secretary for over 30 years. She played golf right up until her late 80s and was made a life member. Now, of course, she’s the oldest life member in the club’s history. She still plays competitive bridge. Jennie recalls that “Mum was never home; she was always out doing something for somebody”.
Perhaps all this is the secret to Lorna’s sharp mind, which shows no obvious signs of ageing. Sure, she’s a little hard of hearing, but she’s still as sharp as a tack.
Travel has also been an important part of Lorna’s long life, and she enjoyed touring Europe and Canada extensively with Alan. She believes travel is important, and that it has given her a fuller perspective on life. Jennie, who shares a mutually respectful and loving relationship with her mum, takes her out for coffee three times a week in
Bordertown, where Lorna is loved and admired.
“The whole town knows her,” says Jennie. Lorna lived independently until she was 105 but needed a pacemaker inserted due to ventricular standstill, a rare cardiac
arrhythmia which caused her heart to stop beating. Post-surgery, she decided to relocate into Bordertown Hospital’s residential care centre, so she could be closer to Jennie, the former Director of Nursing there, and receive medical assistance promptly if required.
Lorna laughs and says that “people thought I’d put the pacemaker in so I’d live longer, but I didn’t – I was 104! I never tried to live this long.”
Laughter is important to Lorna, who says she is always giggling at something, looking at the funny side, trying to stay positive, and never getting bogged down in blame.
A case in point: when asked if she found it difficult, outliving her old friends, she comes back, quick as a flash, with: “Oh, not really. It’s just an opportunity for me to get younger friends – there’s always somebody new and interesting to meet.”
Jennie says her mum has always been a wonderful role model and that even to this day she “blames the weather” for a sore knee rather than her advanced age. “She was mortified when the doctor put her on blood pressure tablets when she was 90,” Jennie says.
Lorna weeds the hospital grounds and picks strawberries from the garden for the other residents – her care for others is ever present. She finds her limited mobility frustrating nowadays, and she misses her garden in Keith, but as she says, she’s “still got gas in the tank”. And her self-esteem is still intact too. When The Weekly takes a phone photo, keen to capture this meeting with Australia’s oldest woman, Lorna asks to see it to check that her shoulders and back are straight. Appearances are important, even at 110.
Asked if she’s made a bucket list, she says she “hasn’t had time to think about that”. She’s done most of the things she’s wanted to anyway, and looking through her many photo albums is like peeping into history. More than 100 years of beautiful clothing, shoes and hairstyles, people and places that have filled a meaningful life.
“Everything flowed with me,” she says. “I got married, I had nice children, a good life – [there’s] no point in looking backwards and having regrets.”
Picture: Tom Huntley for Newspix
Honestly, she says, she has no idea how she’s made it all the way to 110. She just knows she’s “lived a good, honest life”, tried her best at everything and continued to stay
connected to people. She eats three good meals a day – lots of Weet-Bix, porridge, semolina – and she’s stayed active, continuing to exercise today in her room in Bordertown.
Surely there must be something else, The Weekly wonders.
“Laugh and be happy – that’s the best advice I can give anybody,” Lorna says.
This feature originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
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