Gunnedah’s latest centenarian Jean Webb celebrated her amazing milestone with a gathering of family and friends at the Railway Hotel.
Jean’s colourful life over the past century has taken her from the Land of The Long White Cloud to Western Australia and many travels overseas.
Born in Dannevirke on the North Island of New Zealand in 1925, Jeannie, as she was known to her family, spent her childhood and school days in Feilding, in the Manawatu district, 20km north of Palmerston.
Jean’s father’s family had lived for several generations in the area and were well known early settlers of the district.
The daughter of Eugene and Eileen Hastie, Jean came from a very musical family, with her mother and sister Pauline both singers; while her father played a variety of instruments, mainly saxophone and clarinet, in both brass bands and orchestras.
Jean learned to play the violin as a child, and in her teens was a member of the British Music Society in Feilding along with her mother and sister. Later when living in Palmerston North, she and her father played in the Little Theatre Society’s orchestra, and Jean and Pauline were active members of the Palmerston North Operatic Society.
When Jean was 22, she married Owen Stevens in St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Palmerston North, New Zealand, in 1948, raising two children – Pauline and Mark.
Mark has lived in Gunnedah for many years and Pauline sadly passed away in 2005 in Perth where she and her family had lived for several years.
Owen Snr was a clerk in the New Zealand Railways, and later worked in the train control department. The family lived at various times in Palmerston North, Napier, Trentham, Wainuiomata and Lower Hutt.
Like many other families, Jean has known great sadness in her life and the sudden death of her husband in 1976 followed five months later by the loss of her mother was a devastating blow as they were very close.
A little depressed and with itchy feet, Jean sold her house in Lower Hutt and moved to Perth in Western Australia, a city she had always loved. When daughter Pauline and her husband Malcolm Wood also moved there, the three of them went into business together for a time.
On a trip home to Wellington in 1982 to visit her father, Jean met Laurie Webb through the Lower Hutt Widow and Widower’s Club and soon realised they had many common interests. They married the following year and a whole new world opened up to Jean’s adventurous spirit as they both loved to travel and did so extensively over the next few years.
Although most of their trips were to Australia to visit Jean’s children and five grandchildren, they also made several trips to Malaysia, USA, Singapore, Britain and Europe. Their favourite country was Germany, and they often went there, including a stay of three months when they also visited Austria, Switzerland, and Copenhagen. Before this trip they both took a course in the German language at the Goethe Institute in Wellington and avidly read books on the countries they were to visit.
Their last trip was to Germany, Russia, and the Republic of Ireland in 2007.
Laurie worked for the Wellington City Council as a building inspector, and later for Fletcher Construction. After he retired, Jean and Laurie moved to Perth, where they stayed for nearly three years in the home they had purchased in Woodale shortly before Pauline died in 2005.
In 2013 Laurie was diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s, and they decided it would be better to move back to Wellington to be closer to Laurie’s family, David, Anne and Grant.
Laurie died at Wellington in August 1999 and Jean moved to Gunnedah in 2020 to live with her son Mark. Two years ago she became a resident at Lundie House where she now lives a quiet life enjoying the activities on offer. The family has grown over the years with Jean now the proud grandmother of eight grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren, eight great-great-grandchildren and two more due this year.
Jeannie and Owen Stevens on their wedding day at Palmerston North, New Zealand, in 1948.
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