Having spent almost eight-decades of her life rearing marino sheep in the region, Gladys is Coleambally’s latest centenarian.

For her birthday Gladys was received by a flock of over 100 guests gathering at the Coleambally Community Hall including her children Robert Black and Margie Kook as well as a swathe of grandchildren and great grandchildren.

A similar if smaller reception was held for her earlier in the week at Cyprus View Lodge retirement home where she was celebrated by friends and staff as being the home’s first resident to reach 100 years of age.

Gladys is no stranger to taking out titles however, with several of the family and friends attending her birthday being quick to remember the stacks of equestrian and gymkhana horse riding trophies that she had won in her youth, competing at agricultural shows in Deniliquin, Narrandera and Jerilderie.

Galdys’ daughter, Margie said her mother would usually ride to these shows, sometimes camping overnight, from her family’s sheep farm in Gala Vale.

“She used to ride her horse and lead others and once she finished competing in Jerilderie she would unsaddle and unbridled the horses, slap them on the rump, and they would be waiting for her at the farm the next day,” Margie said.

According to Marige, it was as Gladys was driving back to Gala Vale from one of these agricultural shows at Jerilderie in 1944 that she witnessed an RAAF plane crash.

“She was first on the scene and she wanted to get the bodies out but there were live bullets going off,” Margie said. 

Nine RAAF servicemen were killed and one left missing on February 2 1944, after two Beaufort Bombers belonging to One Squadron RAAF Menangle collided in the air about about 30 miles north of Jerilderie.

In her life Gladys has spent the most of her days living at the family farm in Gala Vale initially staying there from her childhood until she was 29 when she married Bon Black the manager of the Goolgumbla Station in 1947.

Spending about a decade and a-half living away from Gala Vale, including a stint in Clare South Australia, Gladys and Bon returned to raising sheep on the family farm after the birth of the children Robert in 1954, Margie in 1950 and her eldest daughter Sally Foster who was born in 1948 and died in a car accident.

“In 1983 Stan her brother also died in a car accident on the Newel Highway, she was left with the bankrupt family property and she managed it frugally and built it up to be debt free property by about 1995,” said Robert.

“She was still crutching maggoty sheep when she was 85,” Robert said.

Gladys continued to live at the farm in Gala Vale until 2012 and actively worked rearing sheep and riding horses until 2006 when she herself suffered a broken leg during a car accident.

“The doctor said to Gladys after five days in hospital in Sydney, you should have been dead by now love, I suppose I better fix your bones up now,” Robert said.

Brothers Colin and Trevor Hawker who have known Gladys since they were children during the 1960s and 1970s said that she is most memorable for her dry humor and being an utterly hard worker.

According to the Brothers Gladys and Bon were best known in Coly for their yearly Christmas parties held at the farm which would be attended by about 100 people coming from the local church service.

These parties would often run throughout the night and feature a massive bon-fire the brothers recounted.  

John Bruce a long term friend and former farm hand from Clare, said in her prime much of Glady’s life was spent sleeping four hours a night after waking at 4.00am every morning to begin her farm work and cooking three meals every day for her family and her farms six resident shearers.

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