On 15 September 1925, Thomas and Valerie Gourlay announced to the Cobargo community the birth of their first child, a daughter Norma. Norma was reared in Cobargo along with her younger sister Beth. Norma has just celebrated her 100th birthday at the Cobargo Hotel along with family members and invited guests tallying fifty.

Norma is one of the most astute, humorous and interesting people I have had the pleasure of meeting. Norma spent her youth attending school and enjoying creating and having fun times with her sister Beth. A particularly memorable event was when the girls were playing in their cubby with their dolls in the back yard when they decided to try smoking. Under Beth’s instruction Norma gathered some bark and dried grass and rolled it into a cigarette, lit it up and commenced to attempt to smoke it. After coughing and choking the cigarette was tossed which in turn caused the cubby to catch alight and burn down. Both girls and their dolls were unharmed.

Norma recalls spending time with her grandparents who owned the original Cobargo Hotel that was on the same site as the present one but was a timber construction. At the age of fifteen, Norma commenced working in her parents’ grocery store in the Benny building and found it a great learning experience. Norma was paid 19/1 a week. Norma had tutoring to learn to play the piano along with Beth and recalled travelling with the music teacher Eunice Dibley by horse and buggy to the home of the McViety family and all the girls had their lessons there.

Norma loved to travel before her marriage and spent four months living in Honolulu with Lorna Benny’s family. She recalled how things have changed and noted her dad used to purchase cheese for the grocery store directly from the ABC cheese factory at Tilba.

Norma met her husband Cecil Grunow at a Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows Ball at the Cobargo School of Arts Hall. He was a sheep farmer but, after they married on 23 June 1956, they moved to Canberra where he became a car and real estate salesman. Norma gained a job as a secretary/bookkeeper at National Printers and worked there for sixteen years. She then worked for the Capital Dental Laboratory for 27 years and retired at age 82 because her boss decided to retire.

Norma has lived for 69 years in Canberra and throughout her life played golf to a very high level and also plays the organ at her local church but mainly enjoys reading murder mysteries. She recounted sitting up till midnight just recently to watch a great murder thriller movie.

She is planning to be here in sixteen months to help her younger sister Beth celebrate her 100th birthday. Norma’s advice to live a healthy life is to not smoke or drink but to eat lots of chocolate. An absolute inspiration.

June Tarlinton

Photo: Beth and Norma holding their original hand-coloured photograph of them as children. Photo Linda Sang