The past 100 years have gone by pretty quickly for Rotorua's latest centenarian Olga Sage.
At her home yesterday, Mrs Sage shared bubbly and plenty of memories with a steady stream of family and neighbours popping in to wish her a happy birthday. That followed a party of 35 relatives - including five generations from all over the country - at the lakefront on Sunday.
"I've been spoilt," she said.
Mrs Sage has been in her Glenholme house for 50 years, ever since she and her late husband, Colin, retired there from their Taihape farm. She has no plans to move anytime soon.
"This is my home," she said. "I've made it that I will stay in my own home until I die." Mrs Sage puts her long life and good health down to keeping active and busy. She was a keen sportswoman in her younger days, playing tennis, golf and bowls, although according to son Brian she was never one to worry about what she ate.
She said these days she kept her mind active by keeping up with the news, which she does through reading, television and her iMac computer.
She got the computer when she was 86 and regularly uses it to email friends and surf the internet, and even has a Facebook page.
Mrs Sage said she had fond memories of her "happy childhood" in rural Taranaki, before the advent of things we now took for granted.
"[The biggest change was] probably the coming of electricity. We had a very clever father, he put in electricity at the farm when I was a child," she said.
"Father bought the second car in Eltham [town in Taranaki] in 1910 and he took us everywhere, off for picnics and to the seaside."
She laughed that on outings in the 1920s she and her four siblings would hide under a rug on the back seat as they didn't want their friends, who couldn't afford a car, to see them.
Mrs Sage has two children, seven grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren, almost all of whom were at Sunday's celebration.
She reckons that family love and support is another reason she's managed to stick around so long and in such good nick.