By Goya Dmytryshchak
Seabrook’s Ellice Hatfull celebrated her 100th birthday on Saturday, becoming Australia’s oldest known Girl Guide.
Mrs Hatfull joined the Guides when she ws about 13 years old while growing up in Bethnal Green in London’s East End.
The year she turned 21, World War II started.
Mrs Hatfull led her own Guide patrol and tended to those in the bomb shelters. She was at the coalface of the Bethnall Green tube tragedy when 173 people died trying to escape what they thought was an air raid.
“If we’d got our first-aid badges, we’d go to the air-raid shelters and comfort people, look after the people, make sure everything was OK,” Mrs Hatfull said.
“Another job we had was, they used to collect old saucepans and tin foil and things like that, and we used to go round with a Costa barrow and collect all these bits and take it to the headquarters. They were all melted down for metal.”
Mrs Hatfull said that during the bombings, the windows of her home would be often blown in or a door would fly off its hinges.
“A month before the end of the war, a doodlebug fell right nearby and we got the blast of it all,” she said. “Right at the end of the war, the lot went. The amazing thing was that in the kitchen on the dresser we had an egg in an egg cup and that was still standing.”
Mrs Hatfull and husband Stanley migrated to Australia in 1957.
Their three daughters joined the Altona Guides in the 1960s and Mrs Hatfull became their unit leader for more than a decade.
Mrs Hatfull celebrated her birthday with her close-knit family, including four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Girl Guides Victoria chief executive Amanda Kelly congratulated Mrs Hatfull.
“Ellice’s Guiding journey shows the ways that Guides can make a difference,” Ms Kelly said. “Once a Girl Guide, always a Girl Guide.”
Goya Dmytryshchak
