Jean Hepner and Gwen Carbines share a combined 182 years of living on this planet, but they play and bounce off each other like giggling schoolgirls.
Best friends for decades, they, like everyone else, have been doing it tough during the pandemic, but it hasn’t stopped them from trading barbs, jokes and deep discussions, even though it was often through the window of a car door.
The Ocean Grove nonagenarians got around lockdown restrictions by going on short outings with their daughters in separate cars.
Heather would accompany Jean, 92, and Jane would drive Gwen, 90, to a nice spot and park alongside each other, more than 1.5 metres apart, wind down the windows and chat like old times.
They have lived opposite each other for 40 years until recently when Jean moved in with Heather’s family, but still in Ocean Grove.
“It’s been a lovely friendship,” Gwen says.
“We’ve both been very fortunate to have daughters,” Jean replies.
The pair have lived through the Great Depression, a World War and now a global pandemic, but both agreed that the War was far worse.
“When I think of what went on then, you can’t put them together,” Jean says.
“They are both totally different. We were on rations.”
In fact, Jean said she had managed to get a lot of sewing done during the past 20 months.
Jean is the self-confessed bossy one and although the two are prone to arguing sometimes, it’s never been heated.
“We’ve never really had a big blue have we?,” Gwen asks Jean.
“No, we tick one another off every now and then, though,” Jean laughs.
Their husbands were both funeral directors and they have both been through personal family tragedies, which were made slightly ‘easier’ by being there for each other.
Gwen calls Jean ‘Mack’, a shortened version of her maiden name – McKenzie.
During our lengthy chat, it was never ‘Jean’, only ‘Mack’.
They now have the same aged care provider and have managed to arrange outings together every fortnight.
They were starting with a leisurely car trip to Portarlington this week.
“We’ll both sit in the back,” Jean insists.
