BaptistCare at home client, Joyce celebrates her 100th birthday

On 26 January, 2025, BaptistCare at home client, Joyce celebrated her 100th birthday at a surprise party organised by her daughter, Marilyn, in the company of her closest family and friends. 

Joyce still lives in her own home, where BaptistCare visits three times a week to help with personal care, cleaning and shopping trips.  

Asked about her longevity, she says, “I just keep doing the same thing today as I did yesterday, and will do again tomorrow.” She’s always tried to keep busy and not let things get her down too much.  

Born in Mosman Park, Perth, back in the days when it was known as Cottesloe Beach, Joyce says she’s had a very ordinary life. Leaving school at the age of 16, she went to work in the office of Bon Marche Limited, a department store located opposite the Perth Town Hall, named after a famous company of the same name in Paris.  

Joyce recalls using an ingenuous cash carrier system in which cylindrical carriers whisked money from the sales counter to the office via a network of tubes. She would receive the cash in the office, write a receipt for it, then send the receipt back to the sales floor via the same system.  

“The carriers were pushed along the pipes by vacuum,” she explains. “The system meant counter staff didn’t have to hold a lot of cash, so it was good for security.”

Five years later, she went to night school to become a comptometrist – a person trained to operate a Comptometer, an early mechanical version of a calculator. She was one of only two people to earn 100% in the final exam.  

On the strength of her great results, she applied for a clerical job with the Naval Store in Fremantle where she was interviewed by a man who became her boss. Six years later she resigned, leaving work on a Friday to marry him the next day.  

“Yes, I married my boss,” she says with a laugh. “At the time, if you were employed by the Government, you weren’t allowed to work once you were married.” She doesn’t remember feeling frustrated about the rule, “It was just how it was.”

From time to time, Joyce did some relief work – helping out on the switchboard for the P&O shipping company, for example – but her main focus was her home and family.  

Encouraged by her husband, who has since passed away, she joined the bowling club in 1966 and was ultimately made a life member. “I used to follow the cricket and the football because my husband did, but bowling is the only sport I ever really played,” she says.  

However, her clerical skills were put to use at the club. She was the Ladies’ Treasurer for 20 years and volunteered in other ways, wherever she was needed.  

Joyce is the oldest living member of her family, which now includes grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but says she doesn’t have any real secrets to share about her longevity. “I came from an ordinary background. I didn’t do anything really remarkable. I take life as it comes, and I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke and didn’t go out with bad men – I do swear a bit though.”

Perhaps that’s her secret.