Doreen and family celebrate being 97 years young

BY TIM HOWARD

The family of South Grafton woman Doreen

Robb know how to celebrate her birthday, after all there have been 97 of them and her sisters and brother have been there for most of them.

A casual glance at the family gathering last week at the Grafton District would have taken in a group of older people having a good time.

But that appearance would only scratched the surface of a remarkable occasion.

At 97 Doreen is the oldest child of Arthur and Beatrice Crampton, who brought 13 children into the world and guided 11 of them to adulthood after returning from World War I.

Seven of those children are still alive and five Dorothy (Dot), Violet (Vi), Molly, Dawn and brother Lenny arrived at the GDSC last Thursday, ready to party.

Apart from the twins, Molly and Dawn – babies at the tender age of 87 – the others are all in their 90s, but age does not appear to have wearied, but just slowed them a little.

Another nonagenarian sister, Queenie, wasn’t feeling well enough to attend, but was there in spirit and as a topic of conversation.

Doreen volunteered herself as the quiet one of the family.

“I like to sit back and watch what goes on around me,” she said, amid the bright chatter and banter of her brothers and sisters.

But she has a sharp enough wit.

When I was told she was still living at home and kept a beautiful garden, she drily remarked:

“That’s the trouble with living by yourself, you have to do everything.”

And how good a gardener is she?

Younger brother Lenny, who at 90 loves nothing more than travelling the East Coast of Australia in his van following the country music festivals, jumped in.

“She could plant a fourinch nail and grow it into a crowbar,” he said.

“I like flowers and growing things,” she said.

“I spend just about every day in the garden.”

Doreen’s other passion –outside family – has been tennis, which she played competitively into her 70s.

“When the tennis is on the TV I love to watch it,” she said.

“He’d only been here a year or two when the war broke out and he enlisted at Cowra and was soon on a ship back to England,”

Molly said.

“He was in the fighting in Europe and he met my mum while he was over him.”

As a youngster Lenny got a job working on the Snowy Mountains Project working as a plant operator. He worked on building the new Parliament House in Canberra and various highway projects around on it,” he said.

Going to a dance has been a part of the women’s lives since they moved to the area around Ulong and Molton as youngsters.

“We would think nothing of walking eight miles to a dance,” Molly said.”And youths, making their debut was something that eluded them until fairly recently.

In 2017 Dawn, Molly, Vi and Dorothy made their debut at Coutts Crossing with five other debutants. “We were presented to the lady mayoress. People who came along that night said it was one of the best debutant balls they ever had,” said Molly.

The conversation turned often to the missing sister, Queen, whose absence surprised the gathering.

Queen’s youthful career as a bullock driver, was remarkable even for her versatile brothers and sisters.

“When she was driving bullocks she could yell and swear with the best of them,” Doreen said.

Of the modern players, Rafael Nadal is her favourite and she has fallen out of love with Novak Djokovic, but she still holds out a candle for a favourite Aussie of yesteryear.

“Johnny Newcombe was beautiful,” she said. “I used to love watching him play.” there after the war.

Listening in to the conversations around the table the Crampton family have not done it by the numbers.

The father, Arthur came to Australia from England just before World War I.

Molly’s account of her mum and dad’s “online” romance more than 100 years ago might hit a chord with modern readers, although the line they were on was a telephone line and not the internet.

“Mum worked in the telephone exchange as an operator,” she said. “That’s how she met dad, talking to him when he made a phone call.

“From there he arranged to meet her and he brought her back to Australia with

NSW, picking up skills on the job.

“They used to call me the Thiess Spare Part,” he said. “Whatever needed to be done, I could do it.”

Retirement around 30 years ago didn’t suit Lenny, so after a career working on the roads he decided he came up with a design for a “the Lenny, a metal spreader to distribute stones onto bitumen.

“It’s still used today and there’s a world-wide patent eight miles back at 2am or 3am in the morning.”

“There’s a road between Timm’s Vale and Camp Creek, Crampton Rd, named after us,” Lenny said.

Their love of dancing has been a lifelong passion which the sisters, Vi Dot, Dawn and Molly, shared until recently teaching their ballroom dancing skills to younger generations.

Despite all the ballrooms they frequented in their

“But away from that, she was the sweetest, gentlest person who would help anyone in trouble.

The helping trend continued well into Queen’s 80s when she helped “oldies” mow their lawns.

“Queenie at 84 was mowing lawns for old people who were younger than she was,” Doreen said.

Although several older brothers and sisters reached ages in their 90s, Doreen’s determined to get to three figures.

“Making 100 would be a big thing,” she said