Community & Business
15 October, 2024
Adelene marks a wonderful 100 years
SHE’s got a wicked sense of humour and a mind as sharp as a tack, and when Yungaburra’s Adelene Franklin celebrates a century this Saturday, there is no doubt the event will attract plenty of well-wishers, family members and friends.
The centenarian only surrendered her driver’s licence three years ago and still keeps busy playing cards with girlfriends once a week, going to bingo and looks forward to her son, John, and his wife, Catherine, taking her out each Sunday for a drive.
She has also been an avid sewer, making clothes for outback kids and also crochets beautiful rugs, wraps them in cellophane, attaches a personal card and gets her son to drop them off to families who have just had a new baby, even though she doesn’t personally know the family.
Proudly displaying her card from King Charles III last week, Adelene is looking forward to friends dropping into her birthday celebrations at Eden House on Saturday from 1pm-4pm.
Having had five children – two girls and three boys – Adelene now has 12 grandchildren, 20 great grandchildren and seven great great grandchildren – and she can name all of them.
Adelene was born in the Herberton Hospital on 18 October 1924 but has lived in Yungaburra for the vast majority of her life, spending the last 70 years in the same family home. It was here that Adelene and her husband, Les, ran a flourishing business for many decades on the site that is now the Foodworks supermarket.
Adelene has deep roots within the region, with her grandparents setting up a dairy farm before the First World War at an area that was then known as Maggs Hill (after her grandfather Gilbert Maggs) and is now known as Windy Hill.
Adelene’s parents met in Ravenshoe, married in 1919, and she spent her first five years living at Maggs Hill before they moved to a place called “Morgan Settlement” near Tolga to start tobacco farming.
“And we went broke – everyone on that settlement went broke because Mr Morgan brought a fellow up from Melbourne to teach us how to grow tobacco and he was all back to front with his seasons – telling them to plant seeds in October whereas they should have been doing that in July,” she said.
Adelene’s father then walked all the way to Mareeba to get “sustenance” which was unemployment benefits at the time, but when they told him that he’d have to pay it all back when he got a job, he said they could keep it. He then walked to Yungaburra to secure a job at a local sawmill to make enough money to move the family to the small town.
When the Second World War came, Adelene went to live with an aunt in Ravenshoe and started working at the local post office.
She subsequently moved to Cairns and lived with her parents, taking a job in the mailroom at the Cairns post office but when the men began to return home after the war, had to give up her job in favour of the men.
It wasn’t long after that that Adelene started to work in a men’s hostel and that was where she met her future husband, Les Franklin, who was originally from Sydney, and married him on 10 March 1945.
The couple had their first child, Diane, in December that year, followed by John in 1948, Kaye in 1950, Wayne in 1954 and Howard in 1956.
One of the biggest moments in their lives was when Les started Franklin and Company in 1946 – a business that sold everything from farm machinery to electrical goods, household items and even petrol out the front, becoming the Caltex fuel distributor for the area for 38 years.
When they lost a staff member in 1956 when Howard was only a few months old, Adelene stepped into help “and I never left”, introducing groceries into the retail mix in 1968, a first step toward the supermarket that is there today.
Adelene has had some health challenges along her 100 years, having been flown to Townsville in the middle of the night by the RFDS in July 2002 for open heart surgery. Sadly, her husband, Les, also had heart problems, surviving surgery after a heart attack when he was aged 56, but succumbing to heart issues and passing away in 1989 aged just 67.
The question on most people’s lips is what is the secret to reaching 100.
“I don’t how I got here – everybody has their ups and downs in life and you just weather them,” she said.
“Live every day as you can.”
