Olive Riley and independent filmmaker Mike Rubbo
Blogging is not just a younger-generation thing. I just recently read an article online about the world’s oldest blogger, a woman from Australia who just recently passed away at the fabulous age of 108! Olive Riley began blogging as a way to tell the world about her life experiences and to comment on modern society today. Her blog was enjoyed by people from all over the world, and even though she was in a nursing home in her last days, she had a friend post for her so that she could keep up with her daily writings.
You can read an article about her here:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080714/world/lifestyle_australia_internet_blogging
Olive Riley often posted lines from her favourite songs or poems that she enjoyed. One of her great admiring readers, Brenda Bryant from Newcastle, wrote her a wonderful poem:
FOR OLIVE RILEY
The World’s Oldest Blogger
Sometimes, I hear the young complain of all they have to do.
But I am sure that their complaints should really be quite few.
Take Washing Day, for instance, all they do is press a knob,
And then machines go whirling round and quickly do the job.
They throw in powder, maybe bleach, and softener as well,
And dirty clothes are whirled about, then spun around, pell-mell.
And then, to follow up, I hear, they set the dryer spinning,
They’ve hardly raised a finger to the end from the beginning.
But things were very different in the days of long ago,
When Olive Riley’s mother washed her clothes as white as snow.
And Olive well-remembers that, when it was Washing Day,
Daughters had to do their bit; there was no time for play.
First Olive looked for firewood, which was sometimes hard to find,
She had to hunt for broken twigs or sticks of any kind.
Sometimes she found a fruit-box that was thrown down on the floor.
She chopped it with a tomahawk, though it made her fingers sore.
After filling up the copper, her Mum would light the fire,
And the water would start heating, as the flames grew ever higher.
Then she threw in some soap chips, followed by Reckitt’s Blue,
(That was a clever little bag that made things look like new.)
Next she got the Sunlight Soap to scrub at all the stains,
And, sometimes, if she scrubbed too hard, there were blisters for her pains.
The corrugated board was rough, her hands were roughened too,
Ruined by years of scrubbing, but what else was there to do?
Then, she threw in the dirty clothes, and gave them all a stir.
The steam rose up in clouds and very nearly smothered her.
She was splashed by boiling water, and the bubbles stung her eyes.
And a line of snowy washing was to be her only prize!
Yet, now, would come the starching, of the collar and the cuff,
And, however hard she starched them, it was never quite enough.
For Father must look perfect when in his Sunday Best,
He mustn’t look inferior, measured against the rest.
At last, the clothes were clean and rinsed and the fire had lost its heat.
Mother was quite exhausted, after so long on her feet.
But the hardest job was yet to come, an energetic trick,
For she had to get the clothes out with a hefty copper-stick!
Imagine sheets all water-logged and weighing half a ton!
Her back was nearly broken by the time that job was done.
A soggy mass lay, wetly, in a tub, somewhere nearby.
The washing was as clean as clean, but not the least bit dry.
Now Olive had a job to do, though she was scarcely grown,
For Mother couldn’t mangle all the washing on her own.
Between the wooden rollers Mother fed the dripping clothes,
While Olive turned the handle, standing on tippy-toes.
The mangle squeezed the water, it came quickly pouring out,
But the washing was still wet and heavy, that I do not doubt.
But Olive and her Mother had to drag it to the trees,
Where a line was stretched, so washing could be dried off in the breeze.
When all was safely pegged, they stood and eyed the white perfection.
But a flock of noisy magpies swooped and swirled in their direction!
They aimed for Mother’s washing, causing splish and splash and stain!
‘Oh well’ said Olive’s mother, we must do it all again!’
You can find her last few blog posts at this temporary blog:
http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com/
Apparently her original blog has been having some glitches, so you might not be able to access it, but they are trying to get it back up and running. Please check back here to see if it is available.
