After milking ten cows morning and night until the age of 86, Teresa Antonello deserves a bit of rest and relaxation.
And the 93-year-old is loving life at Uniting AgeWell Kingsville Community where she has lived for the past four years. “I love everything about living here,” she says in her beautiful Italian accent. “Everything is good.”
And she’s also having fun. She loves trivia quizzes and there are a whole array of arts and crafts classes to attend, cooking demonstrations, card games, exercises and more. Not to mention the bus outings and exploring locally and further afield.
In fact there’s a designated lifestyle team at Kingsville Community – as well as at all the other Uniting AgeWell residential sites – dedicated to ensuring the wellbeing of residents. The team is there to make sure residents are enjoying themselves, are purposively engaged and keeping up a good physical exercise routine.
And if anyone deserves a bit of care and cosseting, it’s Teresa. She is tough. But then, again, she’s had to be as she’s had a tough life.
Teresa was born in Borgo San Martino in the province of Alessandria in Italy in 1929 – one of 11 children. She says growing up with seven sisters and four brothers was challenging.
“You got what you were given. There were no arguments. We were not spoiled. My parents would say ‘shhh, you eat what’s on the table.”
Adventure beckoned and after WWII she came to Australia by boat in the 1950s, two years before the birth of her first child.
She had no sooner landed in Australia than she started working in a factory as a dressmaker.
Later she got a job on a farm in Mildura, where she lived for 10 years, milking 10 cows twice a day. The milk truck would arrive daily and pick up the milk and take it to the factory for pasteurization.
“Life was hard on the farm,” she says simply.
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