Peg Walsh enjoys the flowers and the friendship at her 100th birthday party. Photo / Bevan Conley
Peg Walsh enjoys the flowers and the friendship at her 100th birthday party. Photo / Bevan Conley
Peg Walsh thought her son was taking her to a cafe for afternoon tea on the day of her 100th birthday.
Instead, he took his Whanganui mother to a surprise party with close friends, neighbours and colleagues.
She was delighted by all the attention and the familiar faces. A secondparty for the nieces and nephews was scheduled for Sunday, son David said.
Peg's life story is proof that a person can do a whole lot of living in 100 years.
She was born on February 11, 1922. She has been a big sister responsible for "a pretty wild bunch" of siblings on a Bonny Glen farm, a trainee nurse, a visitor to Scottish relatives, a cycle tourist in Europe, a district nurse in Whangamomona, a wife and a mother.
She lived in a house in Anzac Pde for 50 years - minus the six months spent in a motel after the June 2015 flood. After compulsory retirement from nursing at 60, she became an intrepid tramper and member of the Whanganui Tramping Club that held a party for her birthday.
Peg was nursing in London when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953. She heard the roar from the crowd that went up when Edmund Hillary was announced as the first climber of Mt Everest.
Peg Walsh didn't stop tramping until she was into her 90s. Photo / supplied
She became a legend in the tramping club, said member Barbara Gordon, who recorded her story. In her mid-80s Peg was still a frontrunner to the top of hills, waving away offers of help.
She climbed Mt Taranaki in a group of women on the 100th anniversary of Suffrage Day in 1993, aged 71. She didn't hang up her boots until she was 91.
Born Margaret Kinloch, Peg was the oldest of seven children on a dairy and cropping farm near Marton. They rode 7km to South Makirikiri School, two to a horse, and 5km to Sunday school.
The boys and girls all wrestled and knew all the holds. When Peg finished school in Standard 6 she was needed at home to look after her siblings.
At 15 she went to work at another farm. She was 17 when World War II started and was sent to the Otaki Health Camp to look after children there.
She showed ability and was recommended for nursing training despite her lack of secondary education. She qualified as a nurse in 1945 and nursed at Wellington and Auckland hospitals, working two jobs to save money.
By 1949 she had saved enough and got on a ship for England. She nursed in London, making trips to meet her Scottish relatives. She'd work and save, then take cycle tours through Europe with women friends, sometimes hitchhiking and staying in youth hostels.
She returned to New Zealand in the mid-1950s and trained as a district nurse. She was sent to look after rural families at Whangamomona and married Patrick Walsh, with whom she had two children.
Eileen McKenzie and Peg Walsh have a breather in Tongariro National Park. Photo / supplied
Her final 20 years of nursing were at Whanganui Hospital and tramping sounded like just what she needed when she retired.
Whanganui's was a small club at that time - it has since grown to 270 people. In those days there was plenty of "bush-bashing" and billy tea brewed on a fire. As well as tramping after her retirement, Peg returned to London to see her daughter Kay, explored New Zealand and enjoyed her garden.
