Our People
3 May, 2026
Monica Allan’s century of stories
ASK Monica Allan about her life and she won’t start with the big moments. She starts, instead, with the leeches.
There were little ponds around Linton, and she and a friend would catch them, dropping them onto a hot plate over a fire and waiting for the pop.
“I think of it now,” she said, laughing. “And they did pop.”
They laughed so hard one afternoon that Monica wet her pants — then tried to dry them by the fire.
“That didn’t go too well,” she said.
There were other adventures, too. Late at night, the same pair would slip out and walk down to Jimmy Smith’s orchard, helping themselves to apples they had no intention of asking for.
“We used to steal them,” Monica said, matter-of-factly.
It is a long way from those small acts of mischief in Linton to a 100th birthday — but not, it turns out, as far as you might think.
On May 8, Monica will reach that milestone, cards already arriving from the Prime Minister and the King, though she admits she would have preferred one from the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“The Queen was one month older than me,” she said. “Wasn’t she exceptional? Didn’t ever put a foot wrong, to my memory.”
What makes Monica Allan remarkable is not simply that she has lived for a century, but that she still carries it so lightly — sharp, mischievous, opinionated, and with a storyteller’s instinct for exactly where the laugh belongs.
She was born in Bendigo in 1926, the daughter of a policeman, before the family moved to Linton during the polio years.
At 16, she went to Melbourne for nursing training during the Second World War, when the city was full of American servicemen, brownout restrictions and wartime tension.
She remembered the Americans first — their sharply tailored uniforms, their chocolates, their taxis — and how different they looked to the Australians.
“The Americans really, truly looked after their men,” she said.
“They had these nicely tailored uniforms, whereas the poor old Aussie soldiers had that coarse khaki.”
But wartime Melbourne also carried fear. Monica recalled the “murdering American” whose crimes shocked the city — the Brownout Strangler — operating not far from where she was working.
Her training, under the nuns, was strict.
“Like being in the Army,” she said.
But it stayed with her.
After training, Monica worked at St John of God Hospital in Ballarat, where patients were carried down staircases on stretchers by whoever was available — even the gardener.
“Very primitive,” she said.
She married Kenneth Allan in 1950. On the morning of the wedding, she had her hair set. Then it rained.
The couple raised five children, first in Melbourne and later in Stawell, where they moved when Ken took a position with the post office.
Their first Stawell home was attached to the old fire station, and Monica often answered the phone when calls came in.
She remembered the town as “a very friendly little place”, though not always a modern one.
“I do remember when we first came to Stawell, there was no electricity — there were kerosene lamps — and then they switched it on after we’d been here a little while,” she said.
“They had a wonderful procession up the street. People were dressed up because the electricity was on — that was a big deal.”
Life with five children was constant motion.
Monica made dresses, dancing costumes and wedding cakes. She preserved fruit, took in sewing, and kept a kitchen that was always busy and rarely quiet.
She was known, too, for her pavlovas — simple, reliable and always good.
“If I couldn’t think of anything else to give a person, I’d whip up a pav,” she said.
She decorated cakes late into the night, sometimes at two in the morning, and let the children loose on the leftover icing.
“I liked to have the children about me when I was in the kitchen,” she said.
There was discipline — usually a wooden spoon — though not always successfully applied.
“There was never any swearing in our home,” Monica recalled.
“One day Peter swore — we were in the bedroom, I think — and there was a cricket bat lying across the bed.
“When he swore — because it was not done in our place — I tried to pick up the cricket bat to whack him, and it was too heavy for me, so we all ended up laughing.
“Oh yes, we did have fun.”
After about 20 years away from nursing, Monica returned to the profession at Stawell Hospital — a move her daughter Janet describes as quietly groundbreaking.
“She was a pretty forward woman for her time,” Janet said.
Monica became charge sister of the children’s and men’s wards, later moving to Ararat Hospital where she ran the day centre until retirement.
She had seen enormous change — from sulphur drugs and the arrival of penicillin to early cardiac telemetry, when ECGs were sent to Melbourne for reading.
But her life was never defined by work alone.
There were motorbikes — first learning on her brother’s 500cc Triumph, then buying her own 250cc bike.
She rode from Ballarat to Melbourne and back on her own. Later, she and Ken travelled with a motorbike and sidecar — baby included.
There were rabbiting trips and yabby days, with Monica admitting she had a soft spot for a good rabbit dish.
“That’s a good family day, ferreting, because there were plenty of rabbits around,” she said.
“Put the ferret in and listen for the rabbit running — you’d have the nets. That was always good fun.”
“Crumbed rabbit was nice — slice it up into pieces and crumb it.”
Janet remembers her mother driving an old paddock bomb at night while the children spotlighted rabbits from the back.
“Mum driving like a maniac,” she said.
Monica smiled.
“There were a few things we did your dad didn’t know about.”
Across 100 years, Monica Allan has lived through epidemic, war, motherhood, grief and change.
But ask her for the secret to longevity and she offers no grand theory.
Instead, she offers stories.
Of leeches and stolen apples. Of motorbikes and pavlovas. Of children underfoot and laughter that got away from her.
“I’m afraid I was a bit naughty,” she said.
Then she laughed.
“But it was fun.”
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