For 97 years, Olive Grummisch has lived on Phillip Island.

“And the longest time she’s been away was probably a three-week holiday to the Northern Territory in the 1990s,” says her daughter Darlene.

That makes Olive the resident who has lived on Phillip Island the longest, without leaving.

It’s a claim to fame the great grandmother shies away from, preferring to keep a low profile in the community, despite years of hard work for many organisations.

Olive’s is also a greater family legacy, with six continuous generations of the Jenner and Grummisch families on the island, including two of her eight great-grandchildren living here and her grandparents first moving to Cowes in the 1800s as early settlers.

In 2018 Olive shared her recollections of growing up with the Advertiser: the early farming and war years, working for three decades for Cowes Primary School, and how the area has changed.

“My father William Jenner was born in Cowes in the 1880s and he married Elsie Churchill from Kilcunda.

They had five children and I was the youngest (born in 1926). Mum had all her children at home and I was born in Ventnor, while my family was living on the farm, growing chicory, onions and mixed crops.

I attended Ventnor State School and I recall there being about 18 students and I was the high jump champion.

I remember getting a belting from my mother with my father’s belt after I lost a sock. I’d taken it off to walk through a flooded paddock on my way to school and I didn’t tell mum about it. It was very different in those days.

We would go by horse and jinker into Cowes. Later we’d ride our bikes and mum would give us sixpence to spend on different things. I’d make it stretch as far as possible and buy a milk icy pole for tuppence, or an ice-cream for threepence and then boiled lollies after that. We’d go to Morrisons milk bar and grocery store, which is now a café.

I remember taking the punt to San Remo with my sister’s boyfriend because he had a car. We’d sometimes go to Melbourne.

Motor racing

I really loved the racing bikes and cars. (Motor racing on Phillip Island began in 1928 with the running of the 100 Miles Road Race, which became known as the first Australian Grand Prix. It used a rectangle of local closed-off public roads.) One of the roads went right past our house on Berrys Beach Road and I would run all the way down our drive and stand on the gate and smell the gas. I loved the smell.

My mother and sister used to have a stall at Heaven Corner during the race, selling hundreds of scones to the crowd. Dad would take the copper and boil water to make cups of tea and they sold lemonade too.

War years

I left school at 14 to work at De La Hayes, a grocery store in Thompson Avenue, where Anything Goes is now located. If you wanted to continue schooling after that age you had to go to Wonthaggi.

During the war years we’d have black outs and we’d ration butter and sugar and swap coupons.

I remember making butter substitutes, where we’d melt a tiny little bit of butter and add milk and beat it to a froth and I got to like it.

In 1948 I married Bill Grummisch at the Anglican Church in Cowes and we had our honeymoon in Lakes Entrance. Originally his family came from the Thorpdale area and his father was a policeman.

Bill was working on a chicory farm and we moved to Pyramid Rock Road to run a dairy farm, with some chicory.

We had four children: Allan, who now lives in The Basin; Darryl, who is a plumber at Cape Woolamai; Wayne, a bricklayer at Grantville and; Darlene, who lives at Beaconsfield and runs Island Marketplace Cowes, Phillip Island Markets and Island Market Food Van.

Cowes Primary School

Life on the farm was tough and in 1955 we moved into Cowes and lived where the Coles car park now is, next to the old Hollydene guesthouse.

Bill became a labourer, a jack of all trades, gardener, taxi driver, and worked on the Hamilton’s farm. His father Charlie later owned the Bass Hotel and so Bill worked at the pub for a while.

For nearly 30 years I worked as the cleaner of Cowes Primary School.

At first there was the small school on the land where the Cultural Centre now is, on Thompson Avenue. That’s where my kids started school.

I also cleaned the current Cowes Primary School in Settlement Road and after a few years they pulled down the small school and made the large school bigger.

Retirement

Bill died in 1982 and I retired a few years later.

I would never leave Phillip Island. I was born here and I want to stay here.

The island has changed so much. I look around and think that was land and now it’s homes. We could have just walked anywhere but now you can’t.

But that’s progress. If you want to work here you’ve got to have buildings and bricklayers and plumbers need work. It’s not for me to have an opinion, it’s for the young ones now.

Do I like it now? Next question please.

I do love to smell the sea, and I can hear it too and occasionally I can hear cows mooing from farms on Ventnor Road.”