Above: HelenBy Nicole Williams
HELEN Higginbotham was described as a witty and lovely woman with a flair for gardening.
Mrs Higginbotham was killed when a car crashed through the wall of her retirement village in Springvale last week.
Her son, Brian Higginbotham said it was hard to get anything past her, even at 92 years old.
“She was a lovely old lady; she was as witty as you and I,” Mr Higginbotham said.
“She’d hop on her motor scooter and she would water the garden and cut plants back, right up until the day she died.”
Mrs Higginbotham lived a long and healthy life, only moving into the Lexington Gardens retirement village at 87, when her health problems meant Mr Higginbotham could no longer look after her.
“When she went into the home, she was upstairs but she loved her garden so much she moved downstairs,” Mr Higginbotham said.
“About 12 months before the accident, we moved her bed to the window so she could see her garden.”
The pair had a close relationship, having dinner once a week and would speak on the telephone regularly.
“I would go and get her on a Sunday or Monday for dinner, right up until the day she passed away,” Mr Higginbotham said.
“On the night before the accident, she always did her footy tipping and she rang me up to talk to me about which footy teams she was going to do. That was the last time I spoke to her.”
Mrs Higginbotham grew up in Camberwell with ‘Aussie battler’ parents and left school to do a traineeship in dressmaking.
She was young when she married Ronald William Higginbotham and they lived in Ashburton where they raised their three children, Joy, Neil and Brian.
Neil died at the age of 21 and Ronald passed away in 1990.
Ballroom dancing, dressmaking and gardening were her joys, as was holidaying at the Rosebud foreshore.
“When we are young children, the only holiday we could afford was a tent and caravan at the Rosebud foreshore,” Mr Higginbotham said.
Mrs Higginbotham continued to visit the foreshore for two weeks each year for 65 years, with other regulars nicknaming her ‘Queenie of Rosebud’.
Mr Higginbotham had purchased a plot at the Arthurs Seat Cemetery for his parents so they could overlook the Rosebud foreshore.
Police were called to the Lexington Gardens retirement village just before 4.30am on Thursday, where a car had driven through the car park, crossed over a grass area, gone through a fence and then through the wall of Mrs Higginbotham’s unit.
She died at the scene.
John Stein, 63, was charged with culpable driving, dangerous driving causing death, driving in a manner dangerous and driving while disqualified.
At a bail hearing in Dandenong Magistrates’ Court, police alleged that Stein returned an alcohol reading of 0.136 – almost three times the legal limit.
He was remanded in custody and will reappear before the court in August.
