AUSTRALIA’S OLDEST CITIZEN CELEBRATES HER 112TH BIRTHDAY
Andra Jackson

The Age
October 14, 2008
Australia

Piece of cake: Bea Riley, (centre) celebrates her 112th birthday with
(left to right) her niece Bid Riley, nursing home manager Andreas
Kazacos, son Cliff Riley and his wife Jueno. Photo: Penny Stephens

BUGGIES, wagonettes, and phaetons still constituted the vehicle
section of The Argus, the year Bea Riley was born.

That was more than a century ago, when Collingwood’s Foy and Gibson
store announced the arrival of a shipment of Remington bicycles –
22 pounds and 10 shillings for gentlemen’s bicycles and 23 pounds
and 10 shillings for ladies’ bicycles.

Mrs Riley, who turned 112 yesterday, was presented with a copy
of The Argus from the day she was born, by her son, Cliff, and
daughter-in-law, Jueno.

Her birthday on October 13, 1896, makes her Australia’s oldest-known
citizen, and the world’s 30th-oldest person.

That day the headlines focused on the slaughter of 1000 Armenians by
Kurds on the Euphrates, and speculation that with the retirement of
Britain’s Liberal Party leader, Lord Rosebery, Gladstone would resume
the party leadership.

Told that The Argus back then sold for one penny, Mrs Riley remarked:
"It is different now."

Over more than a century that took her from her birthplace in Poowong
in eastern South Gippsland to nursing in Ararat and to her present
aged accommodation in Rosanna, she nominated the advent of machines
that could fly as the most exciting development of her lifetime.

"I didn’t travel much in aeroplanes," she added.

She has been a survivor in more ways than one.

Having only one kidney left her battling illness early in life,
but Mrs Riley has outlived her sisters and brothers, and a daughter,
as well as her husband of 60 years, a health department administrator.

The grandmother of six and great-grandmother of 14 stayed in her own
home in Ivanhoe until she was 99.

Until five years ago, she still managed to keep up a strict daily
exercise regime, which included touching her toes.

"She was always very resilient and uncompromising in what she did,
" her son, Cliff Riley, 81, said.

A lifelong monarchist, she said of Britain’s royal family: "I loved
them all in turn."

Of the Australian leaders she has lived under, she doted on Sir Robert
Menzies, but said she did not mind Gough Whitlam.

Yesterday it was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Minister for Ageing,
Justine Elliot, who conveyed their congratulations.

Once a keen golfer, Mrs Riley also kept an eye on St Kilda’s fortunes
until recently, said her son, who played for St Kilda firsts in 1951
and 1952.

Since turning 100, she allows herself the treat of a small glass of
Bailey’s Irish Cream before dinner each night.

Yesterday she sipped at a glass of celebratory champagne and,
surrounded by family and friends, contemplated her birthday cake and
its candles.

"I haven’t much breath," she said, but despite her frailty she rose
to the occasion.