Norma Wood celebrates 100th birthday in Mackay

Great-grandmother Norma Wood celebrates her 100th birthday as she looks back on love, war, friendships and packing up life in the city for a new chapter on a dairy farm.

Proving a spirit of optimism is the elixir of life, Norma Wood is celebrating her 100th birthday today.

The Mackay great-grandmother said she was very fortunate to walk around at her age, as she reminisced over photographs from her 50th wedding anniversary with late husband Basil Dudley Wood.

Each photo of loved ones was carefully arranged on the album’s pages, a hard-copy manifest of treasured memories.

Mackay great-grandmother Norma Wood, who celebrates her 100th birthday on December 1, 2021., cherishes a photo album from her 50th wedding anniversary with late husband Basil Dudley Wood. Picture: Heidi Petith

Mrs Wood, born on December 1, 1921, said new technology did not phase her, admitting she had withheld many temptations to toss her mobile phone in the creek.

“I attended Regent’s Park Primary School (in NSW), a three-teacher school to which we had to travel by (steam) train,” she said.

“They did upgrade to electric eventually but that was after I went to high school.

“I remembered that you didn’t need to put your head out the window or you might get some coal dust in your eye from the engine.”

Mrs Wood then attended an all-girls high school before leaving at the end of her junior years to work at the Roycroft Book and Art shop that had a library downstairs.

“I’ve always loved books of course and still do,” she said, adding artists would regularly visit the store.

But an accident while playing representative hockey led Mrs Wood to move onto working at a haberdashery factory before moving closer to home as her father was unwell.

Norma Wood looking ever so elegant as a young woman working in Sydney. Picture: Contributed

“I (then) worked at a dry cleaning factory at Sefton where I met my future husband Dudley who joined the army during World War II,” she said.

While Dudley left for war via Egypt and Greece, Mrs Wood took up work at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation making spare parts for training aircraft.

Mackay great-grandmother Norma Wood with a photograph from her wedding to Dudley. Inset is one of her kookaburras, Norma’s favourite birds. Picture: Heidi Petith

“It’s a bit like Covid now changing our lives, the war changed our lives because a lot of the boys joined up as my husband did and you didn’t see them for years,” she said.

“My husband was a prisoner of war for four years with the Germans.

“He was missing in action for four months before we knew what had happened … in my mind, life had to go on.”

Mrs Wood said she found some comfort in pitching in to send care packages to POWs with food, cigarettes and hand knitted goodies to shield against the cold.

“They were allowed to write to us but it was censored of course,” she said.

The pair married back in Australia on August 18, 1945, three days after Victory in the Pacific Day, with her wearing a wedding dress borrowed from a colleague.

She said they honeymooned at Eungella after her husband’s correspondence with a dairy farmer through an industry magazine and while there toured a farm at Crediton.

They purchased it on the spot, after which they packed their gear in Sydney and made the car trip north for their new adventure in Queensland.

“For four years we lived in a one-room shack on the farm as building materials were hard to come by after the war,” Mrs Wood said.

Eventually they built a three bedroom home and began a family starting with eldest son Ian, followed by Sharon and twin brothers Stuart and Murray.

With no local high school, the twins shared a caravan at Mirani to attend their senior years with dad checking in on the Monday and the boys coming home of a weekend.

Norma Wood with twin sons Stuart and Murray at the Pioneer Valley Show.

“Other people thought I was the worst mother in the world not being with my boys and I used to look them straight in the eye and say, ‘Well I can trust my boys’,” Mrs Wood said.

Along with her busy roles as a mother and helping to run the dairy, Mrs Wood was also in the CWA, a Rotarian and a keen dancer and tennis player.

And she is still a member of two probus clubs and enjoys a card game, no doubt a formidable opponent for the two challengers that visit every week.

Mackay great-grandmother Norma Wood enjoying playing ten pin bowls in retirement. Norma said she is a tomboy who has always taken to playing sport, particularly hockey and tennis. Picture: Contributed

Upon retirement Norma and Dudley moved to Mackay where Mrs Wood introduced a firm no television in the lounge room rule.

“You needed all to talk as a family and it worked,” she said.

Mrs Wood said relationships, whether friendship or family, required commitment on both ends, and a dose of positivity.

“My neighbour comes and has happy hour with me every Thursday night,” she said.