Wyndham Lodge resident Mona Cottee will bring in the new financial year next week with a major milestone.
Monday, July 1 will be the 100th birthday for the mother of three, grandmother of six and great grandmother of 11.
Born Mona Jean Miles in the Gippsland town of Tarwin Meadows in 1924, she was the youngest of five children from Walter and Edith Miles, who migrated from England 15 years earlier.
The family moved to a dairy farm at Ryton in 1928 and at aged 14, Mona left school to help milk the cows.
In 1940 the family moved to another farm at Bacchus Marsh and Mona found work as a housekeeper for a local bank manager and then as a cattle agent, before she and her father both got jobs at the Williamstown railway workshop.
The family moved nearby and with the onset of the Second World War, Mona and her father soon found themselves contributing to the war effort as the railway workshops were converted to build planes for the air force.
After the war, Mona was working as a cutter at Bendans knitting mill in Carlton when a trip to the dances with her sister Sylvia, proved life-changing.
The sisters attended a dance at the Presbyterian Church hall on Collins Street, where Mona caught the eye of Ronald Cottee.
They married in 1947 and remained together until Ronald’s death in 2005.
They lived in Laurie Street, Newport, in a house they built after buying the block for 85 pounds. Mona lived there until moving into Wyndham Lodge three years ago, aged 97.
Cade Lucas
