Family, former colleagues, bowls club mates and friends of more than 60 years lined up to wish Daphne Elston all the best at an afternoon tea in her honour at her home, where she still lives.
Family and close friends later joined her at a surprise dinner in the city, for which she arrived in a limousine arranged by her son, Murray.
Born in Waihi, Mrs Elston was brought up on a farm near Tuatapere until she was 12.
She then moved with her family to Dunedin to escape the memories surrounding the death of her elder sister during the influenza epidemic several years earlier.
When her father lost his job in the Great Depression, she left school aged 13 to help her mother run the Bon Ton Milk Bar, near Cargill's Corner in South Dunedin.
"I had quite a hard life when I was young. It was nothing like it is for children these days. We had to walk a mile and a-half each day to and from school. Perhaps it was all the walking that helped me get this old," she said.
It had been an amazing century, Mrs Elston said, but she did not know where it had gone.
At age 16, she met husband-to-be Ernie Elston, who worked in the barber's shop across the road from the Bon Ton.
The couple married five years later and raised Murray, while running the Musselburgh Men's Hairdresser.
A widow for 26 years, Mrs Elston remained active.
At 82, she travelled to England for a month.
She held her driver's licence until she was 98 and played bowls into her late 80s.
After taking up indoor bowls in 1968, she was twice president of the Forbury Park Indoor Bowls Club and an active player for nearly 40 years, only giving up once she felt her game was slipping.
"It was pride, you see. I didn't want to start losing."
A successful bowls career was marked by her 1998 singles championship win against three-time champion Danny Hill, who was then 60 years her junior.
She does not know what to credit for her longevity and can only guess it is luck.
"Someone must have been looking down at me."
