A MINYIP woman celebrated her 100th birthday on Monday at Dunmunkle Lodge.
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Hildegard Wodyk celebrated her birthday with fellow centenarians and residents Irene May, who is 101 and Nettie Marshman, who is also 100.
Mrs Wodyk’s son Homer Rieth said his mother was born in the village of St Martin, in the Rhine-Phalz Palatinate area of south-west Germany on November 14, 1916.
Shortly before arriving in Australia with her young son, Homer, born in 1952, she married Edward Wodyk, a Polish emigrant, who in time joined the many new Australians, working on the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
Mr Rieth said Mrs Wodyk placed him in boarding schools, first at Padua College, Mornington, and later at Assumption College, Kilmore.
“For many years she worked long and industriously at the Gadsden Container Works in Coburg, saving up to buy a Victorian terrace in Capel Street, North Melbourne,” he said.
“She has lived for most of her life as a spirited and independent woman, in many respects ahead of her time, an avid reader of and correspondent to newspapers, with a keen interest in political philosophy.”
Mr Rieth said his mother once secured an unscheduled meeting with the then Premier Rupert Hamer in 1978.
“During which she offered the premier her blueprint for the administration of social justice and the management of the state of Victoria,” he said.
In later years, Mrs Wodyk lived in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe, before moving to Dunmunkle Lodge in Minyip in 2010.
“She is proud of her four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren,” Mr Rieth said.
“She continues to take a deep interest in those subjects that have always been close to her heart, chiefly history, politics, religion and philosophy,” he said.