In the perfect world we’d have all got together 6 months earlier and I’ve no doubt Alfred (and the rest of us) would have got more out of it.

Alfred Date is the only super centenarian I’ve ever met as he lived in Umina - about 60kms from where I live.

I was working on a commercial deal in that area and the Mayor and the CEO of the local Council were looking for some news worthy items. They asked me; so I told them that Australia’s oldest man was in their Local Government Area.

The upshot was that the 3 of us met Alfred and saw some of what he’d knitted.

Unfortunately it was only a couple of months before he passed and he had declined to the extent that after about 5-10 minutes he became so confused that his son had to take over. 

To be fair, I regretted the visit in hindsight, because it wasn’t in Alfred’s or his sons interest at that stage - but had we done it a few months earlier I’m sure it would have been.

Alfred was a lovely charming man for the first 5 minutes though.

I saw something on Facebook which eventually led me to this article on Alfred Date (1905-2016)