All about Olive

I hoped I would not have to write this post this year but unfortunately it has happened. Olive Riley, the world's oldest blogger, has died.

She was 108 year old and a Woy Woy resident. She was born in Broken Hill in 1899. She died at 6am yesterday in the nursing home in which she has lived for some years. Her blog, All About Olive is maxed out at the moment and can't be accessed. But the news sites are full of the news and it is on the TV tonight.

From the ABC article below:
"Documentary maker Mike Rubbo says the idea for blogging came from another older friend who had taken it up.

"He suggested that Ollie could blog so we put it to her and explained what a blog was and then I undertook to do all the sort of leg work, it was great fun and it was great too to probe her memory more deeply and you get evermore stories about her past, many of which of course were set in Broken Hill," he said."

From the SMH:
"She will be mourned by family and an international readership in the thousands.

"She had people communicating with her from as far away as Russia and America on a continual basis, not just once in a while."
...

Olive had posted more than 70 entries on her blog, or as she jokingly labelled it, her "blob", since February last year.
...
Olive's funeral will be held at Palmdale Cemetery, on the NSW Central Coast, late this week."

Her main site, All About Olive, is inaccessible at the moment due to traffic no doubt. You can say goodbye to her World's Oldest Blogger, run by Eric Shackle while her usual blob typist Mike Rubbo was on holiday.


Goodbye, Olive. We will miss you.


'World's oldest blogger' dies at 108 (ABC) - includes videos of Olive & map of Broken Hill.

World's oldest blogger makes final post (SMH)

Someone peed on the fish - Olive singing & talking on YouTube, posted by Mike Rubbo

Film Broken Hill - photos of Broken Hill


Update, 17th July 2008

World farewells its oldest blogger in the other local rag, the Express Advocate.

Olive's main blob, All About Olive, is accessible again after the massive spike of traffic following the news of her death.

Mike Rubbo, Olive's typist, photographer and video-er, made it possible for her to be the world's oldest blobber. He also went above and beyond in emailing readers when she flagged, asking them to comment again to help perk her up.

Mike has written on the post of 13th July: "She was on the Sydney Harbour bridge when Simon De Groote cut the ribbon, pre empting the opening of that famous bridge, but she took no part". (See the Bridge's 75th for de Groot)

She was born before Queen Victoria died and before Australia became officially Australia at Federation (both 1901) and lived through both World Wars and the Great Depression.

May we all be Olive when we're old.