Mrs Perriam, the widow of orchardist and farmer Harry Perriam, is moving to Te Kauwhata, between Auckland and Hamilton, to be closer to family.
"I'm probably one of the last survivors of the older people in Lowburn. All the people who were my contemporaries have gone. And I'm the only Perriam of my generation left still living in the district," she said.
"It's sad to be moving away and I'm sorry to leave it, but it's just a matter of necessity. All my children are living outside the area so it's time to shift a bit closer to them."
She was born in Trinidad, and that was where she met her husband-to-be, when he was serving in the British Navy'sfleet air arm during World War 2, on submarine watch.
The couple were married with a 6-month-old baby son, Robert, when they flew out of Trinidad on Anzac Day 1945, heading back to Mr Perriam's home in Lowburn. They went to the Panama Canal. After four days, they were able to get a cabin on a freighter going to Sydney.
"The Pacific was infested with Japanese submarines and it was a dreadful trip."
The family arrived in Lowburn in early July, and the icy Central Otago winter was quite a shock for Mrs Perriam, especially as she had no warm clothes and clothing was still rationed.
The couple planted an orchard and set up what was believed to be the district's first honesty stall, to sell the fruit.
"Harry had read about the idea in an American magazine and knocked together a little wooden structure, with a canvas top, near our house and across the road from the Lowburn Hotel. The council would never allow such a thing now," she said.
By this time, the couple had three children - Robert, Helen and Chloe.
"I remember when the stall was set up, we all stayed inside the house and peeped out a bedroom window to see what the reaction was from the customers."
The stall eventually sold up to 17 different varieties of fruit and vegetables as well as ornamental gourds and crabapple jelly, "and we also sold some of my goldfish there, too".
Before long, other orchardists followed their lead, and honesty boxes sprang up around Central Otago.
The original stall was superseded by more solid structures, including one built out of stone and a later one which is used as a home and art gallery today.
The Perriams saw the construction of the Clyde dam.
"The lake has changed the whole area. The site of our orchard is 60ft under the lake now," Mrs Perriam said.
Her husband did not live long enough to see the lake formed.
"He wanted to see it but died on New Year's Day in 1992, a few months before the lake filling started."
She will be sorry to leave the district, but is happy to be shifting closer to some of her 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
"For me, this is the start of a different life."
