Off the Record: Celebrating an inspirational Albany woman, and wishing for a return to warmer mornings

LOVING LIFE It’s been an action-packed few weeks for Rie Saxton. She’s gone squidding in a tinny in the Southern Ocean, enjoyed a drink or two at Liberte, and got up close to some ocean giants on a whale-watching tour for her birthday. Not bad for a 101-year-old. That’s right, the human embodiment of joy in the photo above has just turned 101, and she appears to have better sea legs then yours truly. Off the Record is on a roll with these stories about the incredible centenarians living among us — and why stop now? Each interview presents an opportunity to continue the search for the secrets of longevity. Ms Saxton lives with granddaughter Anna Cameron and her family, who brought her from Perth to Albany earlier this year. “She helped me clean out and detail my car this morning,” Ms Cameron said on Friday. “She’s been in the vegetable garden planting that out and cutting back. “She does all of my ironing, all of my washing.” Ms Saxton also loves entertaining her great- grandchildren, Grace, 4, and Clancy, 3, and is still capable of kicking a ball around. “I walked into the toy room the other day and she was sitting on the carpet playing with the three-year-old,” Ms Cameron said. “I’m thinking, ‘how are you going to get back up?’.” Born Delia Rosemarie Saxton on June 29, 1921, “Rie” grew up in the UK and ended up living on sheep stations with no power in the Australian outback. As her granddaughter put it, Ms Saxton was an English rose who arrived in Australia and got swept off her feet by an Australian bushy. She has lived through hard times and outlived both her children, but remains “excited by life and willing to give everything a go”. “It’s enormously inspiring,” Ms Cameron said. “She grew up in a time without, she never wasted a single thing in her life. “I feel very privileged that my children are making these memories with her.” As for the woman herself, she is loving life in her new home city of Albany with its “beautiful, beautiful views”. Her eyesight is on the wane, but other than that, she is in remarkable shape. “I suppose it’s about enjoying what you do and keeping occupied,” Ms Saxton said. “I like to keep active. “I don’t want to sit around doing nothing. I love gardening, I love walking.” While she did not divulge any groundbreaking secrets to longevity, she did impart some wisdom. Speaking from 101 years of experience, her advice was simple. “Enjoy every day as it comes and make the most of it,” Ms Saxton said. COLD SNAP From Friday to Monday, Albany had four mornings in a row when the temperature dropped to 1.5C or lower. In 57 years of daily records at the Albany Airport weather station, that’s a first. An inopportune time, then, to finally run out of gas for one’s heater. It’s an established fear in the OTR household — the idea that the gas could go empty on a winter weekend, when replacements are not available. What a weekend for that bone-chilling nightmare to become a reality. The gas cylinder guessing game is fraught at the best of times. At the risk of embarrassment, does anyone know how you can tell when one of those big 45kg cylinders is on the brink of running out? What these past few days have shown is that electric heaters simply do not cut it. Try as they might, they cannot stop the cold taking over, a chill that makes your jeans feel as though they are fresh out of the fridge. Albany man John R Jones sent us a photo he took on his way to work early on Friday morning, when it was so cold there was “steam rising off the water” in Princess Royal Harbour. He said it was 1.5C when he took the below photo — a stunning shot, no doubt, but OTR was too busy seeking refuge under the covers to appreciate the sunrise. These icy mornings must be the price we pay for the many idyllic days we get in Albany, when the sun’s out and the temperature is sitting comfortably in the 20s. Oh, how OTR longs for those days.