General News
14 May, 2025
90 years of Florence Webb
Natimuk-born Florence Webb has celebrated another milestone birthday as she turned 90 over the weekend.
Celebrating the weekend before in Horsham with family and friends, Florence said she couldn't believe she made it this far.
"It was a wonderful day, seeing family, friends and cousins that I haven't seen in a long time," she said.
Florence is one of five children and her father was an itinerant worker who travelled with the work.
They lived in a small van on wheels, built by her father, that had no power, no running water and no phone.
"My older brother slept in a tent and the rest of us slept in one van," she said.
"My parents were poor, but everybody was poor in those days.
"I could never remember being hungry."
Florence said her mother cooked outside a lot on the fire as there was no stove inside.
"How my mother fed us is a mystery."
The family moved to Ouyen, where she stayed until she was 16 years old before moving back to Mount Arapiles.
"I stayed in Ouyen for a little while, but then my baby brother, who's 14 years younger than me, got the measles and he was delirious and was asking for me," she said.
"So I came home."
Her younger brother then developed diabetes, but they didn't know how to look after him.
"70 years ago, we didn't even know what diabetes was," she said.
"I went to Melbourne and learnt how to look after him.
"I did look after him for about two years or more, and my mother learnt how to look after him."
for seven years and left after she got married at 25 to her first husband, a farmer from Drung.
Together, they had three children before he sadly passed away from Leukemia after also suffering from Polycythemia, a condition that caused his blood to get too thick for his heart to pump.
Three years later, she met her second husband, Cyril, and they have now been married for 39 years.
"I decided to go back to old-time dancing, and that's how we met," she said.
Florence is a founding member of the Christian Emergency Food Centre in Horsham.
"People in need would go to church offices, and the pastor tried to get them stuff and so forth," she said.
who was in charge of the Wimmera Volunteers, and I got talking to a couple of other people and we got her to call a meeting to see if there were people who would like to start up a food centre.
"We actually had 40 people come, and the churches were the only people that were interested in going on,"
"We asked for a representative from each church and formed a committee, and the Christian Emergency Food Centre was born."
Florence said the group worked for a year to get everything organised before the doors were opened.
"It's just gone ahead in leaps and bounds," she said.
Now a life member of the organisation, Florence was the food room manager for 20 years, before retiring from the position five years ago.
"I loved every minute of it," she said.
"It's a howling success."
Aside from her work at the food centre, Florence enjoyed ten-pin bowling and has a collection of trophies to show for it.
She said she also took up playing softball when she was older for a few years.
Florence now has three grandsons who live in Melbourne with her daughter, Jennifer.
Her son Keith was previously an IT support person at a catholic college in Horsham and now lives in Mooloolaba, Queensland.
The only piece of advice Florence wanted to give to the younger generation was to "just behave yourself".