Long time Ararat resident Cyril Bond turned one hundred last week with a big celebration at Parkland House Willaura, where he now resides.
\nCyril was born in Hampshire, England, and migrated to Australia after the Second World War.
\nAs a young man he joined the British Navy, later serving in World War Two.
\n\u201cI always liked the sea, and I admired the Navy. It suited me down to a tee,\u201d he said.
\nCyril\u2019s late wife, Pamela, who coincidentally shared the surname \u2018Bond\u2019, grew up in the village next door and the pair married before being sponsored out to Australia by friends in Ararat \u201ca long time ago\u201d.
\nThe couple were happy in Ararat.
\n\u201cI\u2019d always had a liking for Australia, and I wasn\u2019t disappointed when I did come. It was lovely living in the country. I really loved the people and the quietness of the Australian countryside,\u201d Syril said.
\nAlthough quietly spoken himself, Cyril\u2019s friends had plenty of good words to say about him.
\nThey explained how he had worked at the Prestige factory for a time before moving to Permewan-Wrights where he was awarded \u2018Worker of the Year\u2019.
\nIronically, he was sacked the following week, along with the other staff, when the business was closed.
\nArarat resident John Gladdis came to know Cyril well when they were in the Ararat Ys Men Club together.
\nWhile Club has now folded, John said a group of about ten former members still meet regularly for coffee, and Cyril has always been a keen participant.
\nThese same members were present at his one hundredth celebrations and enjoyed the opportunity to recall old times.
\n\u201cEveryone couldn\u2019t but help like him, and he\u2019s totally respected. He\u2019s been almost like a father figure to me,\u201d he said.
\nGerry Hirst said Cyril encouraged him to join the Ys Men, and that their families had become very close over the years.
\nGwenda and Morrie Allgood also attended Cyril\u2019s party and were full of praise.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s always just been a nice and approachable person who worked quietly behind the scenes, never big-noting himself,\u201d Mrs Allgood said.
\nAnn Shalders remembered the Bond\u2019s kind welcome to her when she migrated to Ararat from Scotland.
\nCyril was also a keen runner. He made a lot of friends in the sport and continued this passion right into his seventies.
\n\u201cIt was a terrific relaxation and a nice feeling of being free when I was running all those long distances. It didn\u2019t take much to cheer me up,\u201d Cyril said.
\nHis running friends were keen to tell the story of how he once fell flat on his face and lost his teeth in a puddle during a long-distance event.
\nDespite being in a potentially winning position he refused to keep going till he\u2019d crawled around on all fours and fished them out.
\nCyril used to run as far as Maroona sometimes and certainly didn\u2019t let age get in the way.
\nWhen people turn one hundred, they\u2019re often asked what has kept them going for so long.
\nCyril\u2019s response to this question was to laugh and reply, \u201cLots of bad living!\u201d
\nHe has certainly done a lot of \u2018good living\u2019 during his one hundred years, and his friends in Ararat, and family back in England, were plea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Long time Ararat resident Cyril Bond turned one hundred last week with a big celebration at Parkland House Willaura, where he now resides.
\nCyril was born in Hampshire, England, and migrated to Australia after the Second World War.
\nAs a young man he joined the British Navy, later serving in World War Two.
\n\u201cI always liked the sea, and I admired the Navy. It suited me down to a tee,\u201d he said.
\nCyril\u2019s late wife, Pamela, who coincidentally shared the surname \u2018Bond\u2019, grew up in the village next door and the pair married before being sponsored out to Australia by friends in Ararat \u201ca long time ago\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-2119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Staff-at-Cyrils-100th-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1917&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-yb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}