Keeping busy one ingredient for long life

When 6-year-old Barbara Cruickshank boarded the ship Ionic in Liverpool in 1922 bound for New Zealand, she could not have imagined she would be celebrating her 104th birthday in Wanaka yesterday.

The third of nine children, Mrs Cruickshank grew up in Kingston and Queenstown and worked for many years at Invercargill's Kingsland Biscuit Factory before moving to Mataura for a job in a "dry" hotel where she met her husband, Cyril.

She said keeping busy, enjoying her food and having only two children were her recipe for a long and healthy life. Pictured (from left) are great-grandson Xander (12), granddaughter Toni, great-granddaughter Dani MacGuire (10), son Gary Cruickshank and Barbara Cruickshank.