When people pose at the summit of Mount Kosciuszko, it's usually in hiking boots and puffer jackets.
Pauline Taffa was much more stylish.
When she stood at the highest point in Australia, alongside her husband Eddie, in the 1950s, she was resplendent in a dress and heels, back in the day when you could drive a car to within metres of the summit.
It's just one colourful episode in the long life of Pauline, who turned 100 on Saturday, November 26.
"I feel good! God is looking after me. I'm still walking and have my faculties," she said from her home now, at Warrigal Aged Care in Stirling.
In Canberra, she is close to family. But she and her husband Eddie, for many decades, made a real mark down the Monaro Highway, in Cooma.
They ran Taffa's in Cooma from 1947, a store that originally sold everything from groceries to clothes to fishing tackle.
Shopkeeping was in the family. Pauline was born in Lebanon, moving to Australia with her family at the age of 11. They settled in Melbourne where her father opened a pie shop, the Cedar Cafe, in Bourke Street. Pauline was an usherette at the Metro theatre across the road.
Her grand-daughter Louise Taffa, who lives in Campbell, said Pauline met her future husband Edward "Eddie" Taffa in 1939, just at the brink of World War Two.
Eddie was called up to serve, so the couple couldn't marry until 1946, after the end of the war.
"Pauline waited all that time," Louise said.
The couple bought a business in Cooma in 1947. It became Taffa's, the shop opening not long before the start of construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, which saw an influx of Europeans to the town and provided a boost for the business.
In 1971, Eddie sadly passed away from heart failure, his health never the same after the war. Legacy Cooma helped Pauline to be recognised as a war widow, which she has remained for the last 51 years.
Following her husband's death, Pauline changed Taffa's to sell only women's wear and continued to operate the shop until it closed in 2008.
Those 61 years working in Taffa's made Pauline what is believed to be Cooma's longest-serving businesswoman. She had help from her son Metree, who joined the business in 1980. But even in her 80s, Pauline worked 9am to 5pm behind the counter.
Among her many achievements was carrying the Queen's Baton through Cooma for the 2006 Commonwealth Games when she was 84.
She believes the secret to her longevity has been keeping active, "always doing something on a daily basis".
"Even after retirement at 85, she went and taught Catechism to kids at the public schools in Cooma," Louise said.
"For the larger part of her life, she's lived off a Middle Eastern diet and eaten pretty healthy. Even today in aged care, she makes a point to get fully dressed every day."
Not even bowel cancer in the 1990s (when she would go back to work in the shop straight after a dose of chemotherapy) or a major stroke in 2017 could get the better of her. Doctors were worried Pauline would not survive the stroke.
"However, being the strong woman she has always been, she bounced back the next morning," Louise said, of her grandmother.
Pauline, who always contributed to her community, even raising money for the Cooma swimming pool, embodies a life lived well.
"I'm lucky," she said.
