Nancy Bulmer nee Howard turned 100 on Tuesday, 30 July. She celebrated with her family last Saturday at a beautiful dinner at the Binalong Hotel. Surrounded by her children, grand-children, great grand-children, and cousins she cut a magnificent cake backed especially for the occasion. Nancy’s son Russell welcomed everyone and her daughter Pam, as her eldest child, spoke about Nancy’s life. Nancy was born in Mooroopna, Victoria to Earnest and Violet Howard. She was the fifth child in a group of seven. There were five sisters and two brothers. All pre-deceased Nancy.
Her sisters all lived into their nineties while one brother died of Diptheria when he was seven and the other died on the day her grandson, David was married. Typical of Nancy, she didn’t let anyone know about the death until the wedding was over and the bride and groom had departed on their honeymoon. She just quietly went about arranging the funeral as the bride and bridesmaids dressed at her house. Nancy went to school in Mooroopna and as a left-hander she was constantly rapped over the knuckles and told to write with her right hand. Nancy still triumphantly write with her left hand.
At 14 Nancy took up a job with the local Chemist where she worked for five years only to discover that she had been underpaid for the entire time. She met John Bulmer at a dance and he asked “Spots” as he called her because she was wearing a spotted dress if she could walk her home. John was one of a line of twelve generations of eldest sons given the name John. They were married on 7 October, 1939. John worked for his father in one of several radio shops in Victoria. Early in World War II John enlisted in the RAAF and turned his knowledge of radio into action as a wireless operator in an all Australian crew flying Lancaster bombers. Remarkably his entire crew survived the war.
During this time Nancy, her daughter Pam and son John, lived with her sister Madge in Melbourne. With then end of the war in sight, Nancy and children came back to Mansfield Victoria where John had been in business prior to joining up. As he came of the boat from England, John bought a car and drove to Mansfield where he began a Taxi business, drove school buses and worked the projectors at the local cinema. Nancy did all the bookings for the Taxi service. When son, Robert, was born, John worked in a local farming business and later re-opened the radio business. Nancy’s eldest son John developed pneumonia and the family was advised to move north to a warmer clime. Leeton was the place they found comfortable and while John worked on their orange plantation Nancy had chickens and a cow. She made butter and bottled fruit. Nancy’s youngest son Russell was born in Leeton.
The family moved on to Sydney where Nancy helped John is a variety of businesses including a delicatessen, a Hardware shop, a grocery and liquor shop, a cycle and toy shop and then back into groceries with son Russell. From business in and around Sydney Nancy and John moved onto a farm near Merriwa again with Russell. Nancy and John retired to Canberra but in 1981 moved to Harden to support Pam when her husband got quite sick. Russell soon followed and bought Granger’s supermarket and opened a Variety store. John died in 1993 and Nancy has lived as a widow in Harden since then.
She has been a great supporter of the Senior Citizen’s club over many years, holding several offices. Nancy has been one of those women who moved away from the conventional way of being a wife at home doing the housework and garden, while looking after the children. She did do all those things, but she spent a lot of her time helping her husband John in the businesses he developed. She suggests that her 100 years may have come from a busy life.
