From Briar Farm to the Hyatt: Dot Day turns 100

This week, Dot returned to the Hotel Canberra, now the Hyatt Hotel Canberra, in much more salubrious circumstances, celebrating her 100^th birthday with high tea with her daughter Michelle Day and grandson Quinn Thorpe, who had travelled from Los Angeles for the occasion. (Appropriate, too, as the Hyatt also turned 100 this year.)

"It's very exciting," she said. "Everyone's been so lovely. People think to get to 100 is great. I suppose it is."

Not that Dot, who turned 100 on July 15, had any problem with her early married life on Briar Farm, which had no electricity or running water, the little cottage lit by kerosene lights and kept warm with fires that also heated the water from an outside tap.

"And I had a baby but you just do these things. I suppose everybody had it tough," she said.

"I never thought about it ... You just thought it was normal. I mean, no running water? You didn't think about it. But, I'm still here."

She just got on with it, sleeping in a covered verandah with her husband Alby, who was with the Department of Transport, working as a bus driver and Commonwealth car driver. He later bought his own truck and transported materials from a local quarry.

Briar Farm had been a working farm from 1870 to 1913, when the Commonwealth resumed the land for the development of Canberra.

The cottage was then used by employees of the Commonwealth, the last being Alby's parents Charles and Frances Day who lived there from 1927 until the 1950s. Charles was a surveyor's assistant with the Department of Interior who used a horse and sulky to transport surveyors to job sites around Canberra.

Dot was born in Port Pirie and met Alby at a dance in Albury during World War Two when she was in the army, doing admin and driving a truck.

Alby was on secondment from the Transport Department to the Australian National University, taking forestry students bush six weeks at a time.

They married in Port Pirie in 1945. Dot was going to wear her army uniform, but family and friends pooled their resources to buy her a new hat and dress.

The couple moved to Canberra, where they also ended up living on Briar Farm with Alby's parents. Dot loved the trees and fresh air of Canberra, a change from the sulfur that used to drift over Port Pirie, and the couple enjoyed going to dances at The Causeway.

The cottage was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the filling of Lake Burley Griffin. Years later, the family would return to the site and recognise trees that grew near the cottage or the area where the clothesline use to the stand. Dot and Alby were allocated a house in O'Connor and then built their own home in Aranda.

Dot still lives in Aranda with her son Garren, grandson Lincoln and great-grandson Damien.

Dot says she is "fit as a fiddle" and feels lucky to turn 100.

"You've got to keep very busy," she said.

"I did woodworking at night and dressmaking in the day. I'm not saying that's what you do, but that's what I did.

"Got to keep this [pointing to her head] busy when you're young, otherwise it just stops. It's amazing, if you don't keep going, it just fizzles out."

Dot's daughter Michelle Day is an acclaimed photographer who trained in Canberra. She has lived in the United States for the past 30 years, taking stunning portraits of celebrities, including her friend Olivia Newton-John, who called on Michelle as her photographer of choice throughout her career.

Michelle's work was featured in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra in the 2014 exhibition Promo: portraits from prime time.

Michelle said the key to her mum's longevity was her gratitude.

"She's always looking for something to be grateful for or happy about," she said.

Dot agreed: "If you don't think you're lucky, you go under".