Sister Act Siblings Mary Barritt and Lena Lenderink live together at Hamersley and as the pair are just as inseparable now as they were in childhood, it’s the ideal way for them to spend their latter years together.
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t’s one of the many great things about moving into a Hall & Prior aged care home - the fact that if you want, you can choose to continue living together if you’re a couple or siblings. For sisters Mary Barritt and Lena Lenderink, residents of Hamersley Aged Care Home in Subiaco, WA, it’s meant that they can stay as close as ever, living side by side as they grow old together. Lena, 91, was born in Subiaco, and married Jack in 1980. She would go on to own a small business in Halls Head, Mandurah but remained close to her sister Mary, 86, over the years. Her daughter Rita visits the pair regularly and keeps in touch with her mother and aunt. “As children, we used to like sleeping near each other,” says Lena. “It made us feel safe.” 10
There’s some dispute between the pair about who was the dominant one as they grew up. Lena says Mary was bossy but Mary says that Lena was the sister who was in charge. Mary was born five years later in 1936, and by now the family had moved from Subiaco to Kalgoorlie, a country town famous for having an enormous mine site called the Super Pit. Visible from space, this huge scar on the landscape is one of the largest open-cut mines on earth and the biggest gold mine in Australia. About 900,000 ounces of gold are harvested here each year, making a total of 50 million ounces since it started operating in 1989. The hole is approximately 3.7 kilometres long, 1.5 kilometres wide and around 480 metres deep - big enough to bury Uluru.
