By Casey Neill
Adela Casson has not tasted a drop of alcohol in her 100 years.
“Don’t drink or smoke,” was her advice to those hoping follow in her footsteps.
The Springvale centenarian was to reach the milestone with about 60 family and friends on Saturday 20 January at the Mulgrave Country Club.
She was born in Yarraville and moved to Springvale at age 10.
“We had a relative in Springvale. We used to visit here,” Ms Casson said.
Her dad was seeking new employment so they shifted to what was then a small market garden town.
“I’ve been here ever since,” she said.
The family grew vegetables and raised chooks on six acres.
“My father did odd jobs. He had a horse and a plough,” she said.
Son Graham Casson, said: “Pop used to plough and grow vegies out the front and he used to sell them at the Dandy Market.”
Ms Casson attended Springvale State School, where Graham and his two brothers went to school years later.
It’s now Springvale Rise Primary. Ms Casson cut the cake at the school’s 100th birthday celebrations in 2012.
Graham remembers the Springvale Town Hall site as a dog racing track, and “Heather Grove and Royal Avenue were just dirt tracks when we lived there”.
“We used to get bogged in the winter,” he said.
Ms Casson moved into her current home in 1956, and raised her boys there on her own from 1960.
She worked for the Springvale council as the home help supervisor for 30 years.
“She’s had a pretty hard life but she’s always been a wonderful mother to us boys,” Graham said.
“She’s always been here for us and always been here for the grandkids.”
She has seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Graham said his mum was “a bit forgetful but otherwise perfect health”.
“I think it’s just the fact she’s worked hard all her life, always been physically active,” he said.
Ms Casson has never smoked and “never even tasted alcohol”.
“She was brought up as a strict Methodist. Her mother was the same,” Graham said.
She reluctantly gave up her driver’s licence only three months ago, still actively tends to her large garden, knits woollen squares for charity blankets and attends water aerobics in Mordialloc every Monday.
Ms Casson said the biggest change she had seen in Springvale over the years was its cultural makeup, and counts several overseas trips among her life’s highlights.
