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Spanish flu survivor, 107, on her nursing home's coronavirus lockdown: 'It's like we're in jail'

Myrtle Hooper was born the year the Titanic sank. She has lived through two world wars and recalls her parents talking in worried tones about the Spanish flu. Now, at the age of 107, she is facing another global crisis from behind the closed doors of a Swan Hill nursing home.

“It is very like we are in jail,” Hooper says. “We are not allowed to have anyone here and nobody is allowed to go out.” She adds: “But we are well looked after.”

Related: How Spanish flu nearly ripped apart Australia's fledgling federation | Paul Daley

Nursing homes in Australia are under heavy restrictions in an effort to protect vulnerable elderly residents from exposure to the coronavirus. Four people have died after an outbreak in a Sydney nursing home.

From Monday all people over the age of 70 – and younger, if they are Indigenous or have a chronic health condition – have been “strongly advised” to self-isolate, even if they are still living independently.

The pandemic of 2020 has been regularly compared to the Spanish flu, which was first detected in Melbourne in December 1918. It was the last time, before this month, that restrictions were placed on non-Indigenous people travelling within Australia.

By January of 1919 a state of emergency had been declared in Victoria. Soon afterwards the border with New South Wales was closed and public meetings and long-distance travel were banned. About 12,500 people died of the flu and secondary bacterial pneumonia infections in Australia.

Hooper, nee Howcroft, turned seven that year. The restrictions did not impact her life on a wheat cropping property between Boort and Kerang in north-west Victoria, a short distance from the Murray River. She still drove a horse and gig to attend the tiny local school. The flu was a topic that occupied the adults of the house and made little impression on her.

“I can just remember them talking about it,” she says. “When you’re seven years old it really doesn’t mean much to you, does it?”

More significant in her memory was the return of “our boys”, soldiers like her uncle William who were granted soldier settlement blocks in the north-west and Mallee region. She recalls performing at the Meran Hall, aged four, in the uniform of a Red Cross nurse, singing about caring for soldiers.

Her memories from the year of the Spanish flu are of the gender divide in her school’s curriculum, a fact that may reassure today’s parents concerned their children will carry lasting trauma from this time trapped indoors.

“They taught the boys to swim and they taught the girls to sew,” Hooper says. “I suppose it didn’t matter if the girls drowned.”

Twenty years later, in 1939, another global event intruded upon life in country Victoria.

“I was in the hospital having my son Peter, the youngest one, and he was just being born and [a nurse] came in, and she said, ‘Mrs Hooper, Germany has just invaded Poland.’”

Before the second world war, she says, there was little communication between her small corner of Australia and the outside world.

Today, phone calls to loved ones bring news of friends of friends who have been struck down by Covid-19.

“It’s spreading so quickly, you know,” Hooper says. “Every day now there’s so many more, so many more. And it’s very frightening for our loved ones. Each day we wonder who next is going to get it.”

In the UK coronavirus claimed a 108-year-old Spanish flu survivor.

In lockdown, Hooper is reliant on her landline to speak to her family, and wishes it had a video call function.

She was living independently until seven years ago but says: “When I got to 100 I thought it was time. I couldn’t look after myself too much but I was still driving the car.”

Her hands do not work well and she needs help to do up a button. She is frightened of the virus but equally frightened of further losing the ability to care for herself.

“I am 107, as you know, and people will come in and want to have a look at me,” she says. “They come in here … and say, ‘Excuse me but do you mind if we bring the children in to have a look at you? They’ve never seen anyone who is 107.’ I don’t know whether to wave like the Queen or just give them a lolly.”

Her son, who is in his 80s, suggested she charge admission to raise money for the local hospital.

Despite living through the most momentous events of the past century, and careers as an elocutionist and a soprano, Hooper insists she is “not very interesting” and not equipped to offer advice on living through adversity.

Instead, as a word of comfort to those unsettled by global events, she turns to a note penned by a Catholic priest she befriended during her singing career: “I’ll simply say God bless you, and leave to him the rest.”