96-year-old Dawn Waterhouse has lived through the Depression and World War II, but she says nothing quite compares to COVID-19

Australia was deep into the Great Depression, and young Dawn Calthorpe, as she then was, lived with her family on Mugga Way.

"I can remember saying to my dad, what does prosperous mean? And he said, 'That means when you can go for a holiday'. And we hadn't been for a holiday," she said.

"I can remember my parents always saying, 'Oh well, we've got a lovely garden, we'll holiday in the garden.

"We would go out and have a sort of a picnic in the garden for special occasions."

It's a scene that might sound familiar to many people now living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mrs Waterhouse is now 96, and, like the home she grew up, the treasured Canberra museum Calthorpe's House, she is one of our most important sources of history.

She has brought up four children, and seen many momentous world events begin and end.

But despite having lived through the Great Depression, the Second World War and at least two local polio outbreaks, she says the coronavirus crisis is something else entirely.

"I've just found it totally different. I feel that everybody in the world is involved with the same fear, it's not a fear of somebody against you at all, or like an enemy, it's just a general thing," she says.

"We're all in it and we have to deal with it, and you mustn't complain...And if we all pull together, we might be able to deal with it."

She was too young in the 1930s to truly understand what the Depression meant - her mother tried her hardest to make hand-me-down clothes more appealing with new bows - but she does remember the pervading fear of World War II, when she was a teenager.

"It was a very fearful time, the war, with Japanese coming and all that, but young girls couldn't do much about it," she says.

"You were scared because everywhere you looked, there were signs and messages saying 'The enemy is listening' and 'Don't talk'."

But that fear came from an unpredictable foreign enemy, and those waiting at home, especially in Australia, couldn't do much about it.

"But we did our best. We rode our bikes, and we sang. Singing was a great help, it was amazing how much we sang.

"And when we were deprived of everything, just about - food and clothes and things like that - it was nothing compared with the people in England. We were always a little bit better off than someone."

And still later, she says, came the very real terror of contracting polio. Before a vaccine was developed in the 1950s, Australia endured periodic outbreaks of the illness for almost half a century.

"That was a time I was very afraid," she said.

"I was put in quarantine, and I didn't get it, but that was really fearful when I was a child, and then there was another episode when my children were little, too.

"When that vaccine came, it was the most wonderful relief, that our children were going to be free of that dreadful thing."

She remembers several schoolfriends contracting the virus, including one who went from "being a beautiful 14-year-old boy" to being crippled for the rest of his life.

"That was a dreadful thing, almost the same as this. It was something you couldn't fight," she says.

But now that she has lived to a great age, she's watching world events more with fascination than fear.

"I'm scared for the world, but not necessarily for myself, because I'm so old anyway, and I feel I've been blessed I've had this time," she said.

"But when I see pregnant girls or new babies, I think, oh the poor darlings, they can't have the excitement and the joy of all this, and taking their babies and showing them - I do feel for them.

"I really feel a lot of happiness has gone out because of it. And I do feel for those young people - what sort of a future is their child going to have? It's a long, long haul, isn't it?"

She also feels fortunate that she has never known a single moment of boredom in her life

"I just don't know what it is," she said.

"I think my mother probably did it, because when we were children and said, 'I haven't got anything to do', she'd say, 'Well I'll give you something - clean the windows."

She thinks about what it might have been like to have both radio and television growing up, not to mention the thousands of books she'd love to re-read, never mind the ones she's yet to open.

"But I don't see the children playing outside, with even just a square of garden," she says.

"They're not playing hopscotch. You can play hopscotch by yourself with your imaginary friend, or skipping.

"I can just think of myself as a little girl playing by myself.

"It's absolutely essential for children, and it's not a punishment!"

In the meantime, though, as she knits blankets for the homeless, and her family and friends leave meals on the doorstep, she feels optimistic.

"I honestly think that we can't be too depressed about the future. The future is bright, if we can control this dreadful thing, and it's up to us to do it," she says.

"I think the doom and gloom is not getting us anywhere. Buck up and keep doing exactly what you're told to do, and it has to get better!

"Until they get this vaccine, it's up to every individual to pull their weight in the world. We've got a job to do."

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