Yesterday Mrs Butler (nee Hodge) celebrated her 100th birthday.
When she was 5 years old she walked with her older brother Harry the nearly 4.8km to school at Kaweku which was near Riversdale, Mrs Butler said.
A few years later, during the Great Depression and high unemployment, the swagmen would offer to work in exchange for a meal.
"One or two of them would hide in the bushes and jump out at us."
Most of the time she and Harry enjoyed the joke but one of the men they were afraid of.
"We saw him coming [and] we used to hide in the broom until he went past."
The siblings used to go hunting for rabbits, which were an important part of their diet in the lean days of the Depression.
Roasted rabbit was "lovely, really lovely, more like chicken I suppose."
"We used to have nice rabbit pies."
One day Harry moved in front of her as she was about to whack a rabbit and she hit him on the head instead.
"He had the scar for life."
After her parents shifted to Ardlussa, 11-year-old Eric Butler, whom she later married, drove her and her siblings in a gig to Riversdale Primary School.
She attended Gore High School and caught the train in each day.
When she left school three years later she started nursing training at Southland Hospital in Invercargill.
"Dad had two sisters that were nurses."
She also completed maternity nursing training at Waiuku and played hockey for Counties Manukau.
She was very fond of playing tennis, hockey and golf.
When she was 26 years old she married Mr Butler.
"I had known him since I was 7."
The couple settled on a farm at Riversdale and had four children, 12 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
She was not sure why she had lived so long.
"Too miserable to die," was all she could suggest.
