ELLEN Mary Bell still remembers how she got the nickname "Molly".

The 99-year-old Surat resident, who celebrated a century of life yesterday with friends and family, said her name was chosen for her by an old employer.

"I was 22 when I started working at a restaurant as a waitress in Adelaide," she said.

"Before I started the work there, the manager told me there were already three Marys so they said I would be called Molly."

That moniker of convenience has stayed withher ever since, even through marriage and children.

Molly gave up her waitressing work in the 1940s after she married Harry Bell and moved with him to a property he managed in South Australia.

Despite being one of 13 in her own family, Molly and Harry had just the one child, Marie.

She still remembers cooking for the jackaroos that helped Harry on the land, or "the boys" as she called them.

 

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Outside of work and family, Molly said she loved ballroom dancing - especially the dresses.

"I loved the evening frocks - I kept buying them and I couldn't help myself," she said.

"I also loved having picnics with my friends."

Molly and Harry moved to the Surat area in 1979 to be closer to Marie and the grandchildren.

Now a grandmother to three and a great-grandmother to seven, Molly shared one of the secrets to her long and healthy life.

"I've never smoked in my life - I just never liked the smell of it," she said.

Molly's daughter, Marie Bright, said her mother is a "stoic woman" who "is very family-oriented".

"She was a very caring mother when I was growing up and still is," she said.

"I felt I had a very good childhood."