World’s Oldest Blogger Posts Her Final Article

Rest in peace, Olive:

An Australian woman often described as the world’s oldest blogger has died at the age of 108 after posting a final message about her ailing health but how she sang “a happy song, as I do every day.”

Olive Riley posted more than 70 entries on her blog — or “blob” as she jokingly called it — since February 2007.

Olive Riley died Saturday at a nursing home in New South Wales.

On the site, The Life of Riley, and in a series of videos post on YouTube, Riley mused on her day-to-day life. She also recounted living through two world wars and raising three children on her own while working as a cook and a bar maid.

“She had a wonderful memory, and an amazing zest for life,” said her friend Eric Shackle, who met Riley at a nursing home while visiting his wife, who has since passed. “Just two weeks ago, she recalled the words of a song that was popular before World War II, and sang the chorus with me.”

In a post titled “Washing Day,” Riley wrote: “You 21st Century people live a different life than the one I lived as a youngster in the early 1900s. Take washing day, for instance. These days you just toss your dirty clothes into a washing machine, press a few switches, and it’s done.”

She then described how she helped do laundry as a youngster, starting with finding “a few pieces of wood to fire the copper for Mum.”

“When the water in the copper began to boil, Mum would add a cupful of soap chips, and throw in a cube of Reckitt’s Blue wrapped in a muslin bag to whiten the clothes,” she wrote. “Then she put in all the dirty clothes, first rubbing out the stains with a bar of Sunlight soap. … that was jolly hard work.”

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