By KATRINA BRANDON
A SUNNY day arrived just in time for a special celebration for one local resident.
Latrobe Valley local, Maria Dortmans celebrated her 100th birthday last week.
While her birthday fell on Tuesday, August 12, family gathered to celebrate the centenarian last Saturday (August 16).
Maria’s journey didn’t start in Latrobe.
“Mum and dad came out from Holland in 1953 as migrants with nine children,” Maria’s daughter, Sjany Dow, told the Express.
“My father lost his first wife and three of his children in the war, so he came out with four of his own children before he met my mother and got married.”
Once she had settled in Australia, Maria started her Australian life in Narre Warren, where she lived on a share farm, and later moved to a property in Jeeralang North, where some of her family still reside.
Maria went on to have 12 children throughout her life, and currently, she has more than 200 relatives, including her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
For many years, Maria and her husband ran dairy cattle on their Jeeralang property, and later transitioned to beef cattle with their children. As years went on, Maria moved to Traralgon around 1980, after her husband passed away.
On the farm, Ms Dow said her family became quite self-sufficient as Maria loved to spend time in the garden and they had their own meat supply.
“My mum had this vegetable garden and the flower gardens and the fruit garden, and we had our meat (from the farm). Everything was just so totally self-sufficient,” she said.
“Mum and dad used to say that if they didn’t have the farm, they wouldn’t have been able to cope with raising 16 children.
“One of my memories is Sunday night tea out on the farm. Sometimes 20 or more people would sit around the table with children and grandchildren, and mum would just dish up enough food to serve everybody.”
Beyond the farm, according to her daughter-in-law, Gwenda Dortmans, Maria also liked to spend her time volunteering, such as spending time with the Ryder-Cheshire Victorian Homes Foundation Inc. and St Vincent’s.
While Ms Dow said that Maria was strict, she also noted that she was fair and welcoming to all.
Ms Dow said that growing up, Maria treated her step-children as her own. For many years, Ms Dow and her other siblings weren’t aware of the situation.
“I didn’t even know for many years that my older siblings were part of a separate family,” she said.
“We’re all just one, and she (Maria) treated them as one, even though they weren’t hers. She was strict, but fair. She carried out the strictness, but we always knew we were loved and cared for.
“In the winter mornings (before school), when there was snow outside, our shoes would be in the combustion oven to warm up so we didn’t have cold feet. And then, you come home and you have a meal cooked. She’d been picking beans and digging up potatoes, and then cooking cakes and biscuits.”
During tough times, Maria said that her faith is one of the things that kept her going.
Maria’s words of advice are to work hard and to take it as it comes, one day at a time.
