Frances Kelly, the ”timeless” aged-care worker from Cootamundra, has many nuggets of wisdom. Photo: Erin Hee.
Frances Kelly may be 71 years old, but her career continues to blossom.
Aside from updating her aged-care credentials, she goes to the gym and is trying to be a bodybuilder “like every other 70-year-old”.
“In some exercise gyms, they look at your age and think, ‘Oh, could you do it?’,” she said.
“And I say, ‘Well, I’ll lift as heavy as you can.’
“I can do 70 kg deadlifts, and I can lift 25 kg above my head.”
The Cootamundra ”Queen of Frugality” is back at TAFE Wagga Wagga to update her credentials and continue taking care of others after a two-year break from aged care.
“I wanted to look after people who couldn’t look after themselves any longer,” she said.
“I felt it was also my stepping stone into nursing because that would give me the first lot of education in nursing about how to look after people in a ward, or in the process of dying.
“That does happen a lot in aged care.”
In 2020, an estimated 4.2 million Australians were aged 65 and over. The 2021 Census reported 542,000 Australians were aged 85 and above.
As such, Frances finds that her clients are sometimes around her age or older.
“They can see by my face that I’m maybe about their age,” she said.
“And they ask, ‘How old are you?’
“I say, ‘I am timeless. I am much older than you.’
“And they say, ‘How old?’ I say, ‘Well, centuries.'”
As an aged-care worker with a career spanning more than three decades, Frances has seen many changes in the industry.
For her, upskilling her first aid and CPR training is the easy part; tackling all the new technology is where the challenge starts.
Back in her day, computers were only ever used for administrative tasks, such as writing reports or client notes.
“I’ve been doing it [first aid] for over 30 years, so it’s just recall, recall, recall,” she said.
“But this? It’s another new learning process, it’s different with computers.
“Every time I’m using the computer for different things, I’m relearning something else. Once I get used to that, I’m fine.”
The “timeless” aged-care worker’s advice for young people? Look at life like a chessboard.
“The queen is the money, and the king? Well, the king listens to the queen — like in life: not a happy queen, not a happy king,” she said.
“In other words, you will learn that whoever you have, they’d better be good to you.
“I always say, ‘Aim high and while you’re doing this, look at the next step.’ And don’t listen to negative people.
“People say, ‘Oh, you should get married.’ That’s all right if you want to get married. But will that partner agree to your goals?
“Are you prepared to live with this person for the rest of your 50 years? You have to think ahead like a chessboard, and that’s the only way I can describe it.”
Her final nugget of advice is to be careful with credit cards.
“When I went to school, we didn’t learn anything about money,” Frances said.
“When I left school, that was when my financial education began. I started to read books and listen to everybody who was in banking.
“I asked them how a person can have bad money management.
“They told me it was credit cards. Say they get $2000 credit and they spend it on clothes, a holiday and everything, but they forget about the interest.”
While Frances has plenty of nuggets of wisdom to share, she loves hearing from younger folk.
Her favourite piece of advice from them?
“Be cool.”
