Canberra great-grandmother Hannah Deveson celebrated her 101st birthday yesterday, safe in the knowledge she is fully vaccinated.
The centenarian has had both her COVID-19 vaccinations and her flu injection - she's not one to muck around. Her sons say she's had no side effects, "not even a bruise".
"She just likes to get on with it," Kip Deveson said.
Maybe being made of sturdy stuff is genetic.
Hannah's father, Samuel Thomas James, was in the Gallipoli dawn landing with the 12th Battalion AIF. He survived World War I with minor injuries, but was gassed on the Western Front.
Samuel became a TPI (totally and permanently incapacitated) veteran and lost his farm in Scottsdale, Tasmania during the 1930s depression.
So Hannah left school and trained in business studies in Launceston, ready to take on the world.
She celebrated her 101st birthday at the Adria Village retirement home in Stirling, with two of her six children, Kip and Byron.
When asked what his mother might say was her secret to long life, Kip said: "She'd probably say telling people what she thinks."
Byron said she was a non-smoker and non-drinker, except for the occasional glass of mead at Christmas time.
Hannah served in the Land Army during WWII as a housekeeper for a specialist doctor in Melbourne. She was awarded a service medal in 1994 when the government belatedly honoured a commitment made during WWII that the service of women who served in the Land Army and similar would be recognised.
She loved to ride motorbikes when she was younger and has always been a passionate gardener - spending time in the garden at her family home in Waramanga every day before moving to the retirement village five years ago.
She is also a voracious reader. Once the library had to ask her not to borrow so many books at one time.
"Even during the Depression, the story went that she would read jam jars and sauce bottles - anything she could," Kip said.
Her sons said when their mother was born she was "a blue baby" and not expected to live.
One hundred and one years later, she is still a loving mum, the affection between mothers and sons obvious.
Hannah married Henry (Harry) Deveson in Melbourne in 1943.
Harry was a chemist and photographer with the Victorian State River Commission, and joined the Snowy Mountains Authority in 1950 and moved to Cooma. The family moved to Canberra in 1971 when the authority wound down.
Harry took a job as the first film and photo archivist at the Australian War Memorial. He died at Waramanga in 1982.
As well as six children, Hannah has 12 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren.
