The Amaroo Gardens resident celebrated her 100th birthday on October 1, with Knox Mayor David Cooper among the special guests.

Born in Downsend, near Bristol in England, Mrs Pike grew up in an era when kerosene lamps were used for house lighting, school students wrote with slate pencils on slate boards, and lamplighters with long poles turned on gas street lights at dusk.

She recalls the sinking of the Titanic causing great distress in her home town.

She also remembers a local aristocratic house being turned into a hospital for injured soldiers during World War I, and the Spanish Flu epidemic that followed and made her severely ill.

Dorothy began work at 13, delivering telegrams after school. The following year she went full-time at a local post office.

At 19, after paying for her own tutor and studying outside work hours, Dorothy passed the Civil Service examination and achieved the highest mark in England.

Dorothy began seeing a young man named Bert Pike who became her husband. They went for walks and visited the local movie house to see the early 'talkies', marrying in 1934.

During World War II, Dorothy and Bert experienced their share of bombings and air raid shelters.

Arriving in Australia in 1952, they settled in country Victoria and encountered bushfires - including the 1968-69 fires which killed people at Lara, not far from their home.

During those years, Dorothy became a volunteer with the Red Cross, fund-raising and providing refreshments to firefighters.

After Bert's death in 1970, she moved back to Melbourne to be closer to her other family, and has been at Amaroo Gardens for eight years.

Dorothy has two daughters, Gillian and Susan, and five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Known as Grandma Pike, she is a much-loved family matriarch who attributes her longevity to the love and support of her family.